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 184 km round trip from Montebello Vicentino - roughly 3 h 30 in the saddle. On the way it passes Villa Trissino, Villa Godi Malinverni, Villa Barbaro and back through Villa Godi Malinverni. 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 Trissino
A Palladio villa that was never finished can be more interesting than one that was. At Meledo, a hamlet in the municipality of Sarego south of Vicenza, Andrea Palladio drew up grand plans for the Trissino brothers in the mid-sixteenth century: a central block topped by a dome, with long curved colonnades stretching out like arms toward the river. Only a fragment was built, and what you see today is a modest farm building and some remains incorporated into later structures. Yet the design, published in Palladio's Four Books of Architecture, became one of his most influential, and the site 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 Trissino is where the day begins. Next is Villa Trissino.
2. Villa Trissino
Gian Giorgio Trissino was a poet, diplomat and amateur architect, and in the 1530s he had a clever idea. He saw a young stonemason working at his villa in Cricoli, on the edge of Vicenza, and decided to turn him into an architect. He gave the man a classical education, took him to Rome to study the ruins, and gave him a new name, Palladio, after Pallas Athena and the angel in his own epic poem. The stonemason was Andrea di Pietro della Gondola, and he became the most influential architect in the history of the West. The villa at Cricoli, where it all began, is a modest building of the early sixteenth century with a loggia and a tall, plain front.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Planning note
Villa Trissino comes up about 21 km into the recorded legs. Next is Villa Godi Malinverni.
3. 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
about 45 km into the recorded legs you reach Villa Godi Malinverni. Next is Villa Barbaro.
4. 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.