Route 15: A ride around Citta di Castello, Umbria

If you’re looking for history, you came to the right place… it’s all around you

Generally, we try to plan our motorcycle tour routes to avoid getting into the bigger towns or into cities wherever possible. The thing is, Italy is crammed with fascinating towns and cities… The trick is to pick ones where the traffic is a bit more civilised, so you can enjoy seeing the sights without feeling that you’ve crossed a war zone to reach them. We’d avoid taking a bike into Milan, Rome or Naples, but you can still see the history. This route through Umbria is based in the small, beautiful city of Citta di Castello but heads out across spectacular roads to Assisi - famously home to St Francis. But there’s much more to the town than just the monastery, the Sacro Convento. There are several other impressive churches, two castles, a Roman amphitheatre and a truly fabulous town square.

The return leg of our route heads to the less famous but, for our money, equally fascinating town of Gubbio. Its medieval centre, Ducal palace and cathedral are just stunning, but it also has some well-preserved Roman ruins.

Of course, this is not just a route to shuttle you from one tourist site to anther. The riding between our destinations is just as important and it’s spectacular, on twisting roads through beautiful countryside. How long you spend at each place is up to you: you could take an hour or two exploring or just view each as a high-qualify coffee stop before getting back to the riding.

MAPS AND DOWNLOADS FOR A RIDE AROUND CITTA DI CASTELLO

Map of a motorcycle route around Citta de Castello, Italy

Route 1 (our route): start/finish: Citta di Castello. Distance: 160 miles. Riding time: 5.5 hours. Suggested stops: AM coffee: San Feliciano, lunch: Assisi, PM coffee: Gubbio
Route one map, Route one GPX file

Route 2: Distance: 195 miles. Riding time: 6 hours. A full day of twistings roads and Apennine passes.
Route two map, Route two GPX file

Please note: This page contains the route files for The RiDE Guide to motorcycle touring in Italy which came free with RiDE magazine in July 2015. These website page are not regularly updated, so please check all critical information before you travel. All route files are in .gpx format. Garmin and BMW users can download the main file, which contains all the routes and our recommended hotels as separate waypoints. TomTom users can download the individual routes and use the Tyre software to convert them. For many routes we also have Google Map links. However, as Google Maps will not plot routes over seasonally closed high Alpine passes (such as Stelvio) when they’re shut, these may not work for every route all year round.