CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
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.
From Ceggia it runs 245 km to Ceggia; allow about 4 h 04 of riding. The stops in between: Venice and its Lagoon, Villa Cornaro, Scrovegni Chapel Church of the Eremitani and back through Villa Cornaro. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
Slow enough to look. The surface follows the shoreline, so the corners arrive where the water decided, not where an engineer did. Water arrives beside the road and stays for 51 km. The line follows the shore because there is nowhere else for it to go.
Andrea Palladio designed Villa Zeno at Cessalto in the middle of the sixteenth century, and it stands among the flat fields of the lower Piave plain, about five kilometres from the little town of Ceggia and not far from the Livenza river. It is one of the villas of the Veneto that were collectively inscribed on the World Heritage list, and it is quite different from the grand Palladian pieces near Vicenza: an agricultural house, plain and practical, with a broad central block and a pair of long service wings.
Read the complete Villa Zeno write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Villa Zeno is where the day begins. Next is Venice and its Lagoon.
Venice is the only great city in Europe where your motorcycle is entirely useless. The road ends at Piazzale Roma, at the end of a long bridge across the lagoon, and from there on, everything happens on foot or by boat. The city and its lagoon are listed by UNESCO as a whole, a recognition that the islands, the canals, the salt marshes and the fishing villages form a single living system, shaped by over a thousand years of human effort to keep the sea out and the city afloat.
Read the complete Venice and its Lagoon write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Venice and its Lagoon comes up about 57 km into the recorded legs. Next is Villa Cornaro.
Piombino Dese is a quiet village on the flat plain between Padua and Treviso, the kind of place you pass through on the way to somewhere else. Stop on the main road, though, and look at the house set back behind its lawn. Villa Cornaro was designed by Andrea Palladio in the early 1550s for Giorgio Cornaro, a member of one of the grandest Venetian families, and its central portico rises in two storeys of columns, one loggia stacked on another like a temple front on a temple front. On the garden side the same double loggia faces a long lawn. It is one of the most copied houses in architectural history, and echoes of it can be seen in country houses across England and in mansions of the American South. The villa is part of the UNESCO site of the City of Vicenza and the Palladian Villas of the Veneto, and it opens to visitors on certain days in the warmer months.
Read the complete Villa Cornaro write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 93 km into the recorded legs you reach Villa Cornaro. Next is Scrovegni Chapel Church of the Eremitani.
Giotto painted the Scrovegni Chapel in about two years, between 1303 and 1305, and it changed how Europeans drew people. Before him faces were icons; here they are tired, tender, furious, ashamed. The chapel was commissioned by Enrico Scrovegni, whose father Reginaldo was a moneylender so notorious that Dante put him in hell. Enrico built the chapel beside the family palace, so the story goes, to ease his father's soul, and the result is a small brick box covered inside with a blue ceiling of gold stars and thirty-odd scenes from the lives of Mary and Christ, ending with a vast Last Judgment on the west wall.
Read the complete Scrovegni Chapel Church of the Eremitani write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Scrovegni Chapel Church of the Eremitani, about halfway. Next is back through Villa Cornaro.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Villa Cornaro write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Villa Cornaro sits at 169 km, about halfway. Next is back through Venice and its Lagoon.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Venice and its Lagoon write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Venice and its Lagoon comes up about 189 km into the recorded legs. Next is Villa Zeno.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Villa Zeno write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Villa Zeno closes the day.
Villa Zeno → Venice and its Lagoon is 57 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Venice and its Lagoon → Villa Cornaro is 36 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Villa Cornaro → Scrovegni Chapel Church of the Eremitani is 28 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Scrovegni Chapel Church of the Eremitani → back through Villa Cornaro is 31 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Villa Cornaro → back through Venice and its Lagoon is 37 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Venice and its Lagoon → Villa Zeno is 56 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.