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.
A 256 km round trip from Turin - roughly 4 h 22 in the saddle. It goes by way of Ivrea, Sacro Monte o “Nuova Gerusalemme” di Varal and back through Ivrea. The stored terrain estimate reaches about 1,600 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 Ivrea.
Ivrea is the town Olivetti built, or at least rebuilt. In the twentieth century the Olivetti company, famous for typewriters, calculators and some of the first personal computers, turned this small Piedmontese town into a showcase of what industry could be: factories with glass walls and natural light, worker housing, libraries, nurseries and social services designed by the best architects of the day. Adriano Olivetti believed a company should serve its community, and the result was listed by UNESCO in 2018 as an industrial city of the twentieth century. Walk along Corso Jervis and you can see the buildings still standing, some reused, some waiting.
Read the complete Ivrea write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Ivrea comes up about 61 km into the recorded legs. 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.
about 129 km into the recorded legs you reach Sacro Monte o “Nuova Gerusalemme” di Varal. Next is back through Ivrea.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Ivrea write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Ivrea, 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.
Back at Zona di Commando. That is the ride.
Zona di Commando → Ivrea is 61 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.
Ivrea → Sacro Monte o “Nuova Gerusalemme” di Varal is 68 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Sacro Monte o “Nuova Gerusalemme” di Varal → back through Ivrea is 68 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Ivrea → Zona di Commando is 61 km of rhythm rather than effort. Let it flow and let the view breathe.