- Feb 9, 2013
- 6,378
- 7,162
- 23,180
Stage 13 is over and done with, so here comes the Saturday one. Grazie, D.E., for the writeups!
Let’s face it: this third weekend is bad. Admittedly the biggest problem with this particular stage is that it goes away from the mountains on a Saturday, but even then there is some really good hilly terrain in this area of which we are seeing precisely none.
Map and profile
Start
The stage kicks off in Treviso, northernmost of the main cities in the Veneto. The town was likely established by the Romans, although it was fairly insignificant in this time. It is the probable birthplace of Totila, last of the great Gothic warlords. Totila became King of the Ostrogoths in 541, shortly after the Byzantine conquest of Ravenna, the Ostrogothic capital. Both the Gothic War and Ostrogothic power therefore seemed to be approaching its end, but Totila rallied his people and reconquered most of Italy in the next nine years, proving more than a match for even the famed Byzantine general Belisarius. However, Emperor Justinian then sent the other great general of his day, Narses, with an even larger army, and in 552 Totila’s army was crushed in battle he himself did not survive. Joining him in the grave a year later was his kingdom. Neither Italy nor the Byzantines were much better off, though: the peninsula was ravaged far worse than it had already been during the previous centuries of invasions, while the Byzantines had overextended themselves, contributing to their inability to consolidate the vast amounts of territory conquered under Justinian. In Italy itself, complete control would last just sixteen years, as that is when the Lombard invasion started. Treviso itself was spared of the very worst and even started to gain relevance in the Lombard era, becoming the seat of a duchy and home to a mint. By the time of the Frankish invasion two centuries later, it was one of the more important cities in the region, a status it has maintained ever since. Thus Treviso experienced the same pattern of gradual independence, increasing wealth, but also repeated power struggles here from the 10th century onwards that was commonplace in Italy.
Trevisan independence would last until 1339, when it became the first place in mainland Italy outside of the modern municipal limits to fall under the control of Venice. Aside from the 1380s, it would stay there for the duration of the Republic. Four-and-a-half centuries of Venetian control, coupled with the existence of quite a few waterways within the old city, created a cityscape that has caused Treviso to often be referred to as ‘the other Venice’. Otherwise, the city followed a similar trajectory to Vicenza, with a long period of peace and prosperity with the latter being partially undone by the Republic’s terminal decline, followed by Austrian rule after Napoleon’s fall until 1866. And, again like Vicenza, it was badly bombed in the Second World War, claiming approximately 1500 lives.
Modern Treviso is the probable birthplace of tiramisù. Clothing company Benetton are headquartered on its outskirts and remain the name sponsor of the city’s rugby team, who took fifteen domestic titles before going on to be one of two Italian teams competing in the United Rugby Championship, the shared pro league of basically all major rugby countries but England and France. It also has plenty of cycling connections: in addition to being the home of Pinarello, it hosted the world championships in time trialing in 1999 (won by Jan Ullrich and Leontien Zijlaard-van Moorsel) and in cyclocross in 2008 (Lars Boom and Hanka Kupfernagel). It has also been the venue of the 1.2 sprinter’s race Popolarissima since 1919 and seen seventeen previous Giri, for the last time in 2022 when Dries De Bondt won from the break.
(picture by Didier Descouens at Wikimedia Commons)
Route
The first three-quarters of the stage are in the Po Valley, so there really isn’t much for me to talk about. About a third of the way in, the riders cross the border into Friuli. And even with RCS traditionally pretending the Friulian language (sister to the Romansh and Ladin languages found in eastern Switzerland and the Dolomites respectively) doesn’t exist in spite of its official status and 600000 speakers, you can tell from the profile by looking at the stage names. Although the Po valley isn’t exactly noted for its nature, this easternmost portion of it does contain the Tagliamento, probably the central European river least disturbed by humans. Its gravelly bed, with constantly separating branches, runs a kilometre wide in many places, before narrowing considerably as it gets closer to the Adriatic. The intermediate sprint in Morsano al Tagliamento is near the bridge at the point of narrowing.
After another intermediate sprint in Talmassons, the riders pass through the fortress-town of Palmanova, among the best-preserved in Europe. By the time of the bonification sprint in Marsano, the Slovenian border draws near, which means it’s finally time for some hills. In fact, the first climb of any note marks the crossing of the border, with the summit in the hamlet of Medana (3.0k at 3.9%, with a steeper first section). There isn’t much descent to speak of, instead we head for a KOM that gives me yet another linguistic bone to pick. Despite 96% of the village’s inhabitants speaking Slovene as a first language and it being called Gonjače in said language, RCS have gone for an Italianised version as well as the more or less defunct Italian name and called the climb Goniace/San Martino. In spite of some decent ramps near the summit, it is clearly easier than the Gornje Cerovo climb around which the 2021 stage in the area was centred.
The descent takes us back into Italy, with a tiny Gegenanstieg into San Floriano del Collio (400 metres at 8%) immediately after the border. Directly after the descent, we enter – you guessed it – another final circuit, this time an international one. The sole difficulty, the little climb up to Saver, is on the Slovenian side, and as you can tell from the profile below it really doesn’t merit categorisation. Climbed twice here, this is the side they descended in the finale of the 2021 stage.
Finish
There are 7.6 kilometres separating the KOM from the finish, and despite the finish being practically on the border all of them are in Slovenia. The sharp turn at 3.8k to go and the weirdly-apexed turn at 1.8k to go both require some attention.
Now, the finish may very much be in Nova Gorica, but as both towns are jointly hosting to celebrate their shared successful bid to be this year’s European Capital of Culture and their history is obviously tied, I’ll tackle both here. The name Gorizia originally referred to the castle (still intact today), which was first built in the 9th or early 10th century and became the seat of the Counts of Gorizia in the 11th century. Although the core lands of the county were the parts of Friuli and Istria surrounding Gorizia as well as the area around Lienz and Innichen/San Candido far away in South and East Tyrol (welcome to feudal borders!), the counts also controlled other areas at various points in time, most notably all of Tyrol for a century. By the 15th century, the rising Habsburg Empire found its territories divided from each other by the Gorizian lands, so when the last count died heirless in 1500 they swiftly moved in to annex the county (although this was contested by the Venetians, forming one of the backdrops for the League of Cambrai I discussed earlier). However, Gorizia retained a degree of autonomy for much of the Austrian era, only interrupted between French occupation and 1861. The village that existed below the castle had grown into a town by the 12th century, but was never anywhere near the historical significance of its counts.
Unlike almost all of modern Italy, Gorizia did not become part of a unified Italy during the Wars of Independence, instead remaining within the Habsburg Empire together with the rest of the Julian March. This area consisted of what are now the areas around Tarvisio, Gorizia, Monfalcone and Trieste in Italy, Western Slovenia, and Istria and Rijeka in Croatia, and was ethnically a mixture of all three. Many parts of the Julian March became hotbeds of upscale tourism in the second half of the 19th century in particular, with the Austrian Riviera rivalling the French. Gorizia itself was one of the places to benefit, and Belle Époque-era architecture is still well-represented on the Italian side of the border. It was notably the final place where Charles X, the final Bourbon King of France, lived in exile, dying here in 1836. He and a number of his family members are buried in Kostanjevica Monastery, on the same hill as the final KOM.
This prosperous period came to an abrupt end in the First World War, when the northern part of the March, including Gorizia, was the scene of the bloody Italian Front. The entire Julian March was annexed by Italy at the end of the war, with the powers of irredentism and fascism soon dictating a policy of forced Italianization in the majority-Slavic areas. While the destroyed parts of the town were rebuilt, rich tourists would never return en masse. After the Second World War, Italy was forced to give up the vast majority of the area (including the historically majority-Italian west coast of Istria). This is when Gorizia was partitioned between Italy and (then) Yugoslavia into Gorizia and Nova Gorica. The subsequent years saw rapid urban development on the Yugoslavian side, but the economy suffered from the partition on both sides of the border and not even the end of border checks in 2007 has reversed the decades-long population decline in the area. It doesn’t help that both sides of town remain rather separated – even the short railway link between the two was not reopened until this year. The Giro has been to Gorizia on six previous occasions, most recently in 2021 for another international stage won by Victor Campenaerts, however this will be the first time the finish line is in Nova Gorica.
The enormous Habsburg-era train station is the only part of the old town on the Slovenian side. The station square features both the border and, twenty metres into Slovenia, the finish. (picture by Terragio67 at Wikimedia Commons)
What to expect?
Only 1100 metres of elevation gain and none of the hills are particularly close to each other, a lot of sprinters will be thinking they can survive here. And honestly, so long as they start Saver near the front on the final lap in particular, they really should be. A late attack could stick too, but seems less likely.
Let’s face it: this third weekend is bad. Admittedly the biggest problem with this particular stage is that it goes away from the mountains on a Saturday, but even then there is some really good hilly terrain in this area of which we are seeing precisely none.
Map and profile
Start
The stage kicks off in Treviso, northernmost of the main cities in the Veneto. The town was likely established by the Romans, although it was fairly insignificant in this time. It is the probable birthplace of Totila, last of the great Gothic warlords. Totila became King of the Ostrogoths in 541, shortly after the Byzantine conquest of Ravenna, the Ostrogothic capital. Both the Gothic War and Ostrogothic power therefore seemed to be approaching its end, but Totila rallied his people and reconquered most of Italy in the next nine years, proving more than a match for even the famed Byzantine general Belisarius. However, Emperor Justinian then sent the other great general of his day, Narses, with an even larger army, and in 552 Totila’s army was crushed in battle he himself did not survive. Joining him in the grave a year later was his kingdom. Neither Italy nor the Byzantines were much better off, though: the peninsula was ravaged far worse than it had already been during the previous centuries of invasions, while the Byzantines had overextended themselves, contributing to their inability to consolidate the vast amounts of territory conquered under Justinian. In Italy itself, complete control would last just sixteen years, as that is when the Lombard invasion started. Treviso itself was spared of the very worst and even started to gain relevance in the Lombard era, becoming the seat of a duchy and home to a mint. By the time of the Frankish invasion two centuries later, it was one of the more important cities in the region, a status it has maintained ever since. Thus Treviso experienced the same pattern of gradual independence, increasing wealth, but also repeated power struggles here from the 10th century onwards that was commonplace in Italy.
Trevisan independence would last until 1339, when it became the first place in mainland Italy outside of the modern municipal limits to fall under the control of Venice. Aside from the 1380s, it would stay there for the duration of the Republic. Four-and-a-half centuries of Venetian control, coupled with the existence of quite a few waterways within the old city, created a cityscape that has caused Treviso to often be referred to as ‘the other Venice’. Otherwise, the city followed a similar trajectory to Vicenza, with a long period of peace and prosperity with the latter being partially undone by the Republic’s terminal decline, followed by Austrian rule after Napoleon’s fall until 1866. And, again like Vicenza, it was badly bombed in the Second World War, claiming approximately 1500 lives.
Modern Treviso is the probable birthplace of tiramisù. Clothing company Benetton are headquartered on its outskirts and remain the name sponsor of the city’s rugby team, who took fifteen domestic titles before going on to be one of two Italian teams competing in the United Rugby Championship, the shared pro league of basically all major rugby countries but England and France. It also has plenty of cycling connections: in addition to being the home of Pinarello, it hosted the world championships in time trialing in 1999 (won by Jan Ullrich and Leontien Zijlaard-van Moorsel) and in cyclocross in 2008 (Lars Boom and Hanka Kupfernagel). It has also been the venue of the 1.2 sprinter’s race Popolarissima since 1919 and seen seventeen previous Giri, for the last time in 2022 when Dries De Bondt won from the break.
(picture by Didier Descouens at Wikimedia Commons)
Route
The first three-quarters of the stage are in the Po Valley, so there really isn’t much for me to talk about. About a third of the way in, the riders cross the border into Friuli. And even with RCS traditionally pretending the Friulian language (sister to the Romansh and Ladin languages found in eastern Switzerland and the Dolomites respectively) doesn’t exist in spite of its official status and 600000 speakers, you can tell from the profile by looking at the stage names. Although the Po valley isn’t exactly noted for its nature, this easternmost portion of it does contain the Tagliamento, probably the central European river least disturbed by humans. Its gravelly bed, with constantly separating branches, runs a kilometre wide in many places, before narrowing considerably as it gets closer to the Adriatic. The intermediate sprint in Morsano al Tagliamento is near the bridge at the point of narrowing.
After another intermediate sprint in Talmassons, the riders pass through the fortress-town of Palmanova, among the best-preserved in Europe. By the time of the bonification sprint in Marsano, the Slovenian border draws near, which means it’s finally time for some hills. In fact, the first climb of any note marks the crossing of the border, with the summit in the hamlet of Medana (3.0k at 3.9%, with a steeper first section). There isn’t much descent to speak of, instead we head for a KOM that gives me yet another linguistic bone to pick. Despite 96% of the village’s inhabitants speaking Slovene as a first language and it being called Gonjače in said language, RCS have gone for an Italianised version as well as the more or less defunct Italian name and called the climb Goniace/San Martino. In spite of some decent ramps near the summit, it is clearly easier than the Gornje Cerovo climb around which the 2021 stage in the area was centred.
The descent takes us back into Italy, with a tiny Gegenanstieg into San Floriano del Collio (400 metres at 8%) immediately after the border. Directly after the descent, we enter – you guessed it – another final circuit, this time an international one. The sole difficulty, the little climb up to Saver, is on the Slovenian side, and as you can tell from the profile below it really doesn’t merit categorisation. Climbed twice here, this is the side they descended in the finale of the 2021 stage.
Finish
There are 7.6 kilometres separating the KOM from the finish, and despite the finish being practically on the border all of them are in Slovenia. The sharp turn at 3.8k to go and the weirdly-apexed turn at 1.8k to go both require some attention.
Now, the finish may very much be in Nova Gorica, but as both towns are jointly hosting to celebrate their shared successful bid to be this year’s European Capital of Culture and their history is obviously tied, I’ll tackle both here. The name Gorizia originally referred to the castle (still intact today), which was first built in the 9th or early 10th century and became the seat of the Counts of Gorizia in the 11th century. Although the core lands of the county were the parts of Friuli and Istria surrounding Gorizia as well as the area around Lienz and Innichen/San Candido far away in South and East Tyrol (welcome to feudal borders!), the counts also controlled other areas at various points in time, most notably all of Tyrol for a century. By the 15th century, the rising Habsburg Empire found its territories divided from each other by the Gorizian lands, so when the last count died heirless in 1500 they swiftly moved in to annex the county (although this was contested by the Venetians, forming one of the backdrops for the League of Cambrai I discussed earlier). However, Gorizia retained a degree of autonomy for much of the Austrian era, only interrupted between French occupation and 1861. The village that existed below the castle had grown into a town by the 12th century, but was never anywhere near the historical significance of its counts.
Unlike almost all of modern Italy, Gorizia did not become part of a unified Italy during the Wars of Independence, instead remaining within the Habsburg Empire together with the rest of the Julian March. This area consisted of what are now the areas around Tarvisio, Gorizia, Monfalcone and Trieste in Italy, Western Slovenia, and Istria and Rijeka in Croatia, and was ethnically a mixture of all three. Many parts of the Julian March became hotbeds of upscale tourism in the second half of the 19th century in particular, with the Austrian Riviera rivalling the French. Gorizia itself was one of the places to benefit, and Belle Époque-era architecture is still well-represented on the Italian side of the border. It was notably the final place where Charles X, the final Bourbon King of France, lived in exile, dying here in 1836. He and a number of his family members are buried in Kostanjevica Monastery, on the same hill as the final KOM.
This prosperous period came to an abrupt end in the First World War, when the northern part of the March, including Gorizia, was the scene of the bloody Italian Front. The entire Julian March was annexed by Italy at the end of the war, with the powers of irredentism and fascism soon dictating a policy of forced Italianization in the majority-Slavic areas. While the destroyed parts of the town were rebuilt, rich tourists would never return en masse. After the Second World War, Italy was forced to give up the vast majority of the area (including the historically majority-Italian west coast of Istria). This is when Gorizia was partitioned between Italy and (then) Yugoslavia into Gorizia and Nova Gorica. The subsequent years saw rapid urban development on the Yugoslavian side, but the economy suffered from the partition on both sides of the border and not even the end of border checks in 2007 has reversed the decades-long population decline in the area. It doesn’t help that both sides of town remain rather separated – even the short railway link between the two was not reopened until this year. The Giro has been to Gorizia on six previous occasions, most recently in 2021 for another international stage won by Victor Campenaerts, however this will be the first time the finish line is in Nova Gorica.
The enormous Habsburg-era train station is the only part of the old town on the Slovenian side. The station square features both the border and, twenty metres into Slovenia, the finish. (picture by Terragio67 at Wikimedia Commons)
What to expect?
Only 1100 metres of elevation gain and none of the hills are particularly close to each other, a lot of sprinters will be thinking they can survive here. And honestly, so long as they start Saver near the front on the final lap in particular, they really should be. A late attack could stick too, but seems less likely.
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram