Our bike tours to discover Unesco sites in Italy:
Assisi
Along the Assisi- Spoleto bicycle path to discover the city of Assisi – Unesco Heritage .Founded as a Roman settlement, after the fall of the Roman Empire it suffered the ravages of barbarian invasions. Around the year one thousand, having become a free and independent commune and thanks to the development of monastic movements, Assisi experienced a period of prosperity and economic and demographic recovery. In 1182 St. Francis, founder of the religious order of the same name, was born there and was proclaimed a saint in 1228, only two years after his death. From this moment, the city’s history enters by right into universal history as it has been closely associated since the Middle Ages with the worship and spread of the Franciscan movement and the transmission of its universal message of peace and tolerance. Other important monuments are also part of the World Heritage site, including the Church of St. Clare (mid-13th century), founder of the Poor Clare order, the Cathedral of St. Rufino (13th-century facade), the Church of St. Peter (13th century), St. Mary Major, the New Church (1615). Scopri i tour
Matera
Matera is located in Basilicata, in southern Italy. The World Heritage site includes the Sassi and the Park of the Rock Churches, a complex of houses, churches, monasteries and hermitages built in the natural caves of the Murgia, a limestone plateau characterized by deep fissures, ravines, rocks and caves.
With the tour from Matera to Lecce you will have a chance to visit the city of the Sassi.
The sacred mountains in Piedmont and Lombardy
The nine Sacred Mountains, Varallo, Crea, Orta, Varese, Oropa, Ossuccio, Ghiffa, Domodossola and Valperga, are located in the mountains of northern Italy and consist of nine distinct complexes of chapels and sacred architecture dating from the 16th and 17th centuries. The Sacred Mounts, in whose realization the best artists of the late Renaissance and Baroque Lombard artistic tradition participated, were born as places of prayer in Europe as an alternative to the Holy Land, where it was increasingly difficult for pilgrims to get to because of the expansion of Islamic culture, and as a response to the Protestant Reformation.These architectural complexes, distributed along the slopes of a hill, induce visitors to follow a physical and spiritual path, a pilgrimage through a symbolic itinerary of monumental stations that make the natural space sacred. In addition to being places of the soul, then, the Sacred Mountains are also the result of a grandiose project of sacralizing the landscape and are remarkably integrated into the surrounding nature composed of forests, lakes and hills. With the Marble Tour from Domodossola to Milan you can admire the Sacred Mounts of Domodossola, Ghiffa and with a detour also the Sacred Mount of Varese.
Etna
With the Etna and Taormina tour, you will get to admire the beauty of Mount Etna.
Mount Etna is located on the east coast of Sicily and is the highest active volcano in Europe and one of the most active volcanoes on the globe. Thanks to 2,700 years of eruptive activity, the maximum height of the volcanic cone today exceeds 3,300 meters above sea level over a base diameter of about 45 km. Such dimensions make it the most imposing terrestrial volcano in Europe and the entire Mediterranean area.
Etna is also one of the most studied and monitored volcanoes in the world and is of global scientific and cultural importance, for volcanology, geophysics and other earth science disciplines.
According to myth, the volcano’s ash activity and lava eruptions are said to be the fiery ‘breath’ of the giant Enceladus, who was defeated by Athena and trapped for eternity in an underground prison under Mount Etna, and earthquakes are said to be caused by his turning between the caten
The Worker’s Village of Crespi d’adda
Along Leonardo’s Greenway from Milan to Lecco you will encounter the Worker’s Village of Crespi d’adda.
Crespi d’Adda is an extraordinary example of a “company town,” a phenomenon that developed in Europe and North America in the 19th and early 20th centuries, an expression of the prevailing philosophy of enlightened industrialists toward their employees.The village was founded by Cristoforo Benigno Crespi to house the workers of his textile factory, and its final configuration was developed by Cristoforo’s son, Silvio Benigno Crespi, who had studied the workings of German and English cotton mills. Silvio created a town for the purpose of providing comfortable housing and services to take advantage of a stable workforce and prevent industrial conflict. The town remained single-family owned until the 1970s when many buildings, particularly houses, were sold to private individuals. Depopulation caused a significant decline in industrial activity.
Completed in the late 1920s, the town offered employees a high standard of living through multi-family housing (each with a garden) and community services that were very advanced for the time. The entire village was laid out in a geometrically regular shape, intersected by the main road coming from Capriate. The factories and offices were located on one side of the road, corresponding to the left bank of the Adda River, while the village itself was on the opposite side of the road and followed a rectangular grid of streets on three lines. The houses differed from each other in style, which helped to provide a pleasant variety of townscapes, related to the role its occupants originally played within the factory.
Workers benefited from other services in addition to housing, including public toilets and laundries, a clinic, a consumer cooperative, a school, a small theater, a sports center, a house for the local priest and one for the doctor, a hydroelectric station that provided free electricity, and other communal services. Buildings with highly symbolic value were also present, such as the church and castle (residence of the Crespi family), a new office complex, and houses for factory managers located south of the workers’ factories. Discover the tour
Leonardo Greenway: from Milan to Como Lake LOMBARDIA / ITALY
And that’s just the beginning 🙂
Below you will find more info about bike tours to discover the UNESCO World Heritage Site