Villa Thiene and Le Colline del Prosecco di Conegliano e Va
Plan this ride
Recorded distance
224 km
Riding-time estimate
4 h 10
Journey
Recorded itinerary
Distance and timing basis
Ordered leg totals agree within rounding. Stop distances are approximate sums of rounded legs. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: producer-declared routed record.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distance and riding time are measured on the routed road. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
A 224 km round trip from Quinto Vicentino - roughly 4 h 10 in the saddle. The stops in between: Villa Godi Malinverni, Villa Barbaro, Le Colline del Prosecco di Conegliano e Va and back through Villa Barbaro. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 950 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
Waypoint introductions and full write-ups
1. Villa Thiene
Quinto Vicentino is a quiet farming town on the flat plain just north-east of Vicenza, and its town hall happens to be a villa by Andrea Palladio. Villa Thiene was commissioned in the sixteenth century by the brothers Marcantonio and Adriano Thiene, members of one of the most powerful families in Vicenza, and Palladio drew up a grand design for it with courtyards and wings that would have spread across the fields. Only part of that plan was ever built. What stands today is a solid, rather austere block, and the council offices are inside it, which gives the place a pleasingly everyday feeling.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
Villa Thiene is where the day begins. Next is Villa Godi Malinverni.
2. Villa Godi Malinverni
Every great architect has to start somewhere, and Andrea Palladio started here. Villa Godi, built for the Godi brothers in the late 1530s and early 1540s at Lugo di Vicenza, is considered his first villa, and you can already see the ideas that would make him famous: a clear, symmetrical plan, a central hall flanked by rooms in harmonious proportion, and a building set carefully into the landscape, here on a terrace looking out over the plain. It is still a little stern compared with his later villas, but the frescoes inside, by painters such as Giovanni Battista Zelotti, are lively and colourful. It is part of the UNESCO listing of the City of Vicenza and the Palladian Villas of the Veneto.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
Villa Godi Malinverni comes up about 31 km into the recorded legs. Next is Villa Barbaro.
3. Villa Barbaro
At the foot of the Asolo hills, near the village of Maser, a long, golden villa looks out over the plain with the mountains behind it. Villa Barbaro was designed by Andrea Palladio in the 1550s for the brothers Daniele and Marcantonio Barbaro, cultivated Venetian patricians, and it is one of his most perfect works, combining a central house like a temple with long arcaded wings for farm buildings. Inside, the rooms are covered with frescoes by Paolo Veronese, among the finest of the Venetian Renaissance: painted landscapes, mythological figures and trompe l'oeil doors with servants peeping through, a game of illusion that still surprises visitors. Behind the villa, a nymphaeum with statues and a pool sits against the hillside, and nearby stands the Tempietto, a small round church also designed by Palladio. The villa is part of the UNESCO site of the City of Vicenza and the Palladian Villas of the Veneto, and it remains a working estate producing wine.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
about 79 km into the recorded legs you reach Villa Barbaro. Next is Le Colline del Prosecco di Conegliano e Va.
4. Le Colline del Prosecco di Conegliano e Va
These are not soft, rolling wine hills. Between Conegliano and Valdobbiadene, the foothills of the Pre-Alps rise in steep hogback ridges, sharp crests of rock running east to west, with vines clinging to slopes so steep that much of the work is still done by hand. Grass-covered terraces called ciglioni hold the soil in place, and the result is a patchwork of vines, woods and small villages that UNESCO listed in 2019.