Home » Italy » Central Italy: Venice to Naples, including Italy Survival Guide

Statistics:<br>
Tour date: July 1996.<br>
Total distance: 1300 km.<br>
Total altitude gain: 9 km.

Central Italy: Venice to Naples, including Italy Survival Guide

Thomas Driemeyer
2005-10-16 14:06:47

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We stayed overnight and spent some time on the usual church circuit. Visiting churches and associated museums means countless pictures and statues of Madonnas, Apostles, people nailed to trees, children being killed (a favorite theme, apparently) and assorted other gory scenes so enjoyed by the church. Interestingly, the Vatican is a refreshing deviation from this uniformity. The Basilica San Vitale proved to be the most interesting sight here. We also visited the mausoleum of Dante Alighieri.

We next rode to Rimini, using the road along the coast that parallels the highway. It's an endless procession of beachwear shops and other tourist traps. Rimini itself is also totally tourist-oriented. We first tried to find the youth hostel, which is listed in the IYH guide but turned out to be an abandoned building close to a busy highway, filled with stacks of chairs and garbage and long defunct. We stayed instead in the Albergo Filadelphia (Via Pola 25).

SAN MARINO

San Marino, 9k Until now, the terrain had been flat. Rimini marks the northeastern corner of the Apennine mountains that cover most of central Italy. From now on until Roma, our daily rides included an average altitude gain of about 1200 meters. Grades are usually about 5-7%, occasionally up to 12%, rarely more. Most climbs were shorter than 500 meters. Our first climb was to San Marino, a small mountaintop enclave that is not part of Italy. It is totally tourist-oriented but manages to be very pleasant and certainly worth the trouble to climb up there. Most roads in the centro storico (historic center) are very steep, and we rode up all the way to the top. We even found a scenically located restaurant at reasonable prices. San Marino gives the impression of being very rich.

After descending from San Marino, we continued on highway 258 through Pennabilli, and used a small side road to cross over to highway 208 at Pieve ...