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 Turin it runs 460 km to Turin; allow about 8 h 18 of riding. The stops in between: Castello di Agliè, Sacro Monte della Beata Vergine, Sacro Monte o “Nuova Gerusalemme” di Varal and Il Sabbione o settentrionale. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 1,750 m; a measured road-elevation profile is not available. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
Turin is the city that made the Savoy dynasty into the kings of Italy, and the area known as the Zona di Comando, the Command Zone, is the heart of that story. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the dukes of Savoy, who had moved their capital to Turin in 1563, laid out a grand ensemble of palaces, courtyards and arcades around the old castle, turning a provincial town into a stage for royal power. Piazza Castello is the centre, with the Palazzo Madama, a medieval castle with a baroque facade, and the Palazzo Reale, the royal palace, with its gardens and the Royal Armoury. It is part of the UNESCO group of the Residences of the Royal House of Savoy, listed in 1997.
Read the complete Zona di Commando write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Zona di Commando is where the day begins. Next is Castello di Agliè.
Agliè is a small town in the Canavese, the hilly district north of Turin that spreads between the Po plain and the mouths of the Alpine valleys, and its castle is far grander than the town around it. Begun as a medieval fortress by the San Martino counts, it was transformed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries into a baroque residence and later bought by the House of Savoy, who turned it into a summer palace with richly decorated rooms, a chapel, a theatre and a large park with fountains and a lake. It is part of the UNESCO listing of the Residences of the Royal House of Savoy, a ring of palaces around Turin, and Italian television viewers may recognise it from a popular costume drama filmed there.
Read the complete Castello di Agliè write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Castello di Agliè comes up about 40 km into the recorded legs. Next is Sacro Monte della Beata Vergine.
Oropa is a sanctuary on a scale that surprises everyone who comes up the valley from Biella for the first time. At almost twelve hundred metres, in a bowl of mountains, a vast complex of churches, courtyards, porticoes and pilgrim lodgings rises in terraces, built over several centuries around an ancient chapel that holds a Black Madonna, a wooden statue of the Virgin that legend attributes to St Luke. Above the main buildings, a Sacro Monte of chapels with life-size statues illustrates the life of Mary along a wooded path. It is one of the nine Sacri Monti of Piedmont and Lombardy listed by UNESCO in 2003, and one of the most important Marian shrines in the Alps.
Read the complete Sacro Monte della Beata Vergine write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 95 km into the recorded legs you reach Sacro Monte della Beata Vergine. Next is Sacro Monte o “Nuova Gerusalemme” di Varal.
Varallo is a small town at the point where the Valsesia stops being a wide valley and starts becoming a mountain one, and above it, on a rocky spur reached by a winding road or a short cable car, is the oldest and most ambitious of the Sacri Monti. In 1491 a Franciscan friar called Bernardino Caimi, back from the Holy Land, set out to recreate Jerusalem here for pilgrims who could never make the journey. The result is a hilltop village of more than forty chapels filled with life-size painted terracotta and wooden figures, hundreds of them, telling the life of Christ like a frozen theatre. Gaudenzio Ferrari, the great Renaissance painter of this valley, worked on many of them.
Read the complete Sacro Monte o “Nuova Gerusalemme” di Varal write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Sacro Monte o “Nuova Gerusalemme” di Varal, about halfway. Next is Il Sabbione o settentrionale.
Lake Monate is small, round and remarkably clean, set in the gentle hills of the Varese province between Lake Maggiore and Lake Varese. It has no river flowing into it, being fed by springs, and its water is among the clearest of any lake in Lombardy, which makes it a favourite with swimmers on hot summer days. On its northern shore, near Cadrezzate, the site known as Il Sabbione preserves the remains of a prehistoric village built on piles at the water's edge, part of the UNESCO listing of prehistoric pile dwellings around the Alps. The Varese area is rich in such sites, and the finds from them, including pottery, tools and the remains of wooden canoes, are displayed in local museums.
Read the complete Il Sabbione o settentrionale write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Il Sabbione o settentrionale sits at 172 km, about halfway. Next is back through Sacro Monte o “Nuova Gerusalemme” di Varal.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Sacro Monte o “Nuova Gerusalemme” di Varal write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Sacro Monte o “Nuova Gerusalemme” di Varal comes up about 304 km into the recorded legs. Next is back through Sacro Monte della Beata Vergine.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Sacro Monte della Beata Vergine write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 365 km into the recorded legs you reach back through Sacro Monte della Beata Vergine. Next is back through Castello di Agliè.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Castello di Agliè write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Castello di Agliè, late in the day. Next is Zona di Commando.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Zona di Commando write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The route ends here after 460 km.
Zona di Commando → Castello di Agliè is 40 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Castello di Agliè → Sacro Monte della Beata Vergine is 55 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Sacro Monte della Beata Vergine → Sacro Monte o “Nuova Gerusalemme” di Varal is 61 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Sacro Monte o “Nuova Gerusalemme” di Varal → Il Sabbione o settentrionale is 75 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Il Sabbione o settentrionale → back through Sacro Monte o “Nuova Gerusalemme” di Varal is 73 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Sacro Monte o “Nuova Gerusalemme” di Varal → back through Sacro Monte della Beata Vergine is 61 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Sacro Monte della Beata Vergine → back through Castello di Agliè is 55 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
back through Castello di Agliè → Zona di Commando is 39 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.