- Sep 20, 2017
- 13,654
- 25,666
- 28,180
The race recommences with a short intermediate stage. The first question: is it too early for the breakaway?
Map and profile
Start
Just like in 2016, the Italian portion of the race starts in Catanzaro, the capital of Calabria. By the standards of the region, it’s not an old city by any means – during Antiquity, the main settlements were on the coast, and only in the second half of the 9th century, with the threat posed by Arab sea raids on the rise, was it deemed necessary by the Byzantines (who held most of southern Italy at the time) to establish a fortified town on a hill overlooking the sea. It was perhaps already during this century that silk production was first introduced to the town. Certainly, Catanzaro was the first place in Italy to produce silk, and for the majority of its history it could be considered the European capital of silk.
This development occurred in spite of a fairly tumultuous early history. It is not clear how much of a foothold the Arabs ever had in the area (the claim on Wikipedia that Catanzaro was an emirate for 150 years is almost certainly nonsense), but the remains of an Arab necropolis suggest that their presence was felt. However, the real external threat to Byzantine rule would arrive in the 11th century: the Normans. Over the course of the 11th and early 12th century, they slowly gained control over the southern third of Italy. The majority of this area had been Byzantine prior to their arrival, and it is not a coincidence that the Norman conquest coincides with the aforementioned tumult in the Empire at the time. Catanzaro was one of the last towns to hold out, but fell after a lengthy siege in 1069.
At the end of the conquest, in 1130, the Normans established the Kingdom of Sicily, which was later split into a Sicilian and a mainland portion both calling themselves Sicily – historians have done the sensible thing and called the latter the Kingdom of Naples. Catanzaro would remain a part of the latter for as long as it existed, but the convoluted nature of medieval power structures meant that its political status remained turbulent. On the one hand, control over the Kingdom of Sicily and then Naples repeatedly switched hands from one dynasty (usually holding far more than just the one kingdom) to the next, on the other hand, Catanzaro itself alternated between direct royal control and fairly autonomous rule by the Calabrian nobility. Eventually, in 1460, the king of Naples reasserted control over Catanzaro and gave it significant new privileges. This helped usher in a very successful era for the city, with the silk production reaching its peak in the 16th century.
By this time, the Kingdom of Naples was long since a constituent country of the Spanish Empire, but from the second half of the 16th century onwards the Spanish kings overextended themselves militarily. The monarchy was so deeply in debt that it repeatedly defaulted on its loans, and rather than making sensible decisions such as avoiding getting bogged down in a war in the Low Countries for almost a century, the response was to increase taxes throughout the empire. As a result, it became increasingly difficult for Catanzaro to compete internationally, and with the overtaxation starting the long decline of southern Italy, the domestic market also shrank further and further. Thus, silk production in Catanzaro went into terminal decline, finally disappearing somewhere around the time of Italian unification in 1860.
The remainder of Catanzaro’s history is not especially notable. It has remained an important regional centre, alternating with Reggio Calabria as the Calabrian capital (Catanzaro regained this status in 1970), but as with most of southern Italy, it is simply not doing particularly well (in fact, after a period of rapid growth after WWII, it has lost 15% of a population that peaked north of 100000) and that’s a story that becomes repetitive and a bit demeaning if I point it out with every place in southern Italy in every Giro. An example of the region’s problems can be found in 1961, when one of the darkest pages of the city’s history occurred. Just outside of town, a train derailed on a high viaduct, crashing to the bottom of the valley and killing 71 passengers. The investigation found that the train had been travelling at almost double the 35 km/h maximum speed that had been imposed due to the poor state of the track; the train driver’s defence was that this had been caused by the poor state of the brakes.
In the Giro, Catanzaro has been a host on eight previous occasions (two of which were in its seaside suburb), most recently the aforementioned 2016 stage.
(picture by LIL.PAOLO at Wikimedia Commons)
The route
The stage starts by heading west towards the Tyrrhenian Sea. The roads are not the most exposed, but it’s worth noting that Catanzaro is known for its wind in general and its southeasterly winds at this time of year in particular. Just west of the city, there is a very low pass in the southern Apennines at Marcellinara, which is crossed at the very start of the stage after a minor climb (5.5k at 3.2% including the initial false flat). The route then descends into the former marshlands of the Piana di Sant’Eufemia, before reaching the Tyrrhenian coast 33 kilometres into the stage and turning right to follow it northwards.
The next 47 kilometres are along the shore, until the road turns inland for the intermediate sprint in San Lucido and the ensuing climb up to Cozzo Tunno. There are three ways to reach this summit from the west, and unfortunately they’ve picked the easiest one. This ascent matches the profile below, except that we don’t do the final 600 metres of it and the KOM comes after 14.5 kilometres. It should get rid of a lot of riders, but doesn’t lend itself to attacking racing.
Finish
After an irregular, but fairly straightforward descent, there are 25 kilometres left to go, all of them in the wide, urbanised Crati valley. At the head of this valley sits Cosenza, the main city in the region and today’s finish. From the profile, it looks like things drag uphill after the bonus sprint, but aside from the very end it mostly averages about 1%. After a long section without much to stretch things out, the actual finish is very technical: although the roads are decently wide, we have six ninety-degree turns and three roundabouts (they go left at one and straight at the other two) in the final 1.6 kilometres. The two last right-handers are a bit tight, the others are more sweeping. The latter right-hander is the final turn and comes at 400 metres to go, with the ensuing final straight averaging 3.7%.
Founded in the 8th century BC, Cosenza owes its early rise to the combination of a reasonably fertile plain and being too difficult to access from the coast for the Greek colonisers. Hence the Italic tribe that dominated what is now the Calabrian hinterland, the Bruttii, made it their capital in the 4th century BC. The Bruttii were more than capable of holding their own against the Greek cities, but the growing power of Rome proved to be a different story. They were subjugated after fighting on the losing side during the Pyrrhic War (280 – 275 BC), and after rising again during the Second Punic War, Cosenza (then Consentia) was punished by having its political power crushed. Only after Romanisation did it have its city rights restored, after which it developed once more into a regional centre.
Then as now, Calabria was not one of the more important parts of Italy, but Consentia still gained a claim to fame at the tail end of antiquity. At the start of the 5th century, the ailing Western Roman Empire was less and less able to fend for itself, and more and more reliant on alliances with invading barbarians to hold off other invading barbarians. Perhaps the militarily most powerful group of the age were the Visigoths, led by Alaric. From 391 onwards, he was alternatively allied with the Western Roman Empire, with the Eastern Roman Empire, fighting against either of the two, or a combination of the above. Alaric’s preferred option was to establish a power base within the Roman world, not to destroy it (it should be noted that he was a Christian), an, but fate decided otherwise. In 408, his allies at the western court were massacred. This had the twofold effect of enraging Alaric and driving the vast majority of fighting forces in Italy into his hands. After a two-year standoff that involved an aborted siege of Rome and multiple failed negotiations, Alaric marched on Rome again and this time, he sacked it. While Rome’s political role had withered and the Vandal sack some decades later would be much more brutal, it was a seminal moment in the fall of the Empire nonetheless. But for Alaric, it was hardly a victory either – all ties with the Empire were now irreparably damaged, and there was no clear place for him or his men to settle. He headed south next, but in 411 in Consentia, he fell ill and died. The Visigoths were eventually allowed to settle in Aquitaine and wound up establishing a kingdom that ruled all of Iberia.
Cosenza itself survived the onslaught of the age and retained its administrative and practical central function, but together with the rest of Italy, was heavily depopulated during the endless wars of the 5th and 6th century. Southern Italy was spared of the initial Lombard invasion towards the end of the latter, remaining part of the Eastern Roman/Byzantine Empire, but their 21-year war to (re)conquer Italy from the Ostrogoths that preceded it was perhaps the most damaging of all, and affected all of the peninsula. Cosenza was eventually taken by the Lombards in the second half of the 7th century, which was as far south as they ever advanced. For the next few centuries, Cosenza’s function was therefore mostly as a military border town, until the arrival of the Normans in the 11th century swept the Byzantines away, asserted control over the Lombards and eliminated the border.
From that point forward, the broader political context for Cosenza becomes similar to that of Catanzaro, so we can focus on the city itself. In the 12th century, when the Kingdom of Sicily was under control of the Hohenstaufens, their most famous ruler (Frederick II) initiated great economic and urban development. In the 16th century, one of the main learned societies of the Italian south, the (still extant, albeit in a much-reduced form), Accademia Cosentina, was established here. This academy gave the city considerable cultural importance, especially under the auspices of Bernardino Telesio, a key forerunner of modern empiricism. The city’s academic tradition lives on today in the University of Calabria, which has grown to 35000 students since its establishment in 1972. This was the height of the postwar development of Cosenza, which saw the population grow from 40000 to 106000 by 1981; especially in the two following decades, depopulation was rapid and Cosenza only has 64000 inhabitants today. Aside from the university, tourism is a notable pillar of the economy: the city is the most-visited in Calabria. It hosted the Giro ten times until 1989, but since then, the only stopoff had been a stage start in 2013.
(picture by Giorgio Grano at Wikimedia Commons)
What to expect?
A tough one to call. Normally speaking this would either be a day for the Matthews-type sprinters or the breakaway, but there are barely any of the former in this field and it might be too early in the race (especially on such a short stage) for the latter. Although both options are still very possible, that might open the door for a slow ascent and a much bigger sprint than ‘should’ happen with a final climb of this size.
Map and profile
Start
Just like in 2016, the Italian portion of the race starts in Catanzaro, the capital of Calabria. By the standards of the region, it’s not an old city by any means – during Antiquity, the main settlements were on the coast, and only in the second half of the 9th century, with the threat posed by Arab sea raids on the rise, was it deemed necessary by the Byzantines (who held most of southern Italy at the time) to establish a fortified town on a hill overlooking the sea. It was perhaps already during this century that silk production was first introduced to the town. Certainly, Catanzaro was the first place in Italy to produce silk, and for the majority of its history it could be considered the European capital of silk.
This development occurred in spite of a fairly tumultuous early history. It is not clear how much of a foothold the Arabs ever had in the area (the claim on Wikipedia that Catanzaro was an emirate for 150 years is almost certainly nonsense), but the remains of an Arab necropolis suggest that their presence was felt. However, the real external threat to Byzantine rule would arrive in the 11th century: the Normans. Over the course of the 11th and early 12th century, they slowly gained control over the southern third of Italy. The majority of this area had been Byzantine prior to their arrival, and it is not a coincidence that the Norman conquest coincides with the aforementioned tumult in the Empire at the time. Catanzaro was one of the last towns to hold out, but fell after a lengthy siege in 1069.
At the end of the conquest, in 1130, the Normans established the Kingdom of Sicily, which was later split into a Sicilian and a mainland portion both calling themselves Sicily – historians have done the sensible thing and called the latter the Kingdom of Naples. Catanzaro would remain a part of the latter for as long as it existed, but the convoluted nature of medieval power structures meant that its political status remained turbulent. On the one hand, control over the Kingdom of Sicily and then Naples repeatedly switched hands from one dynasty (usually holding far more than just the one kingdom) to the next, on the other hand, Catanzaro itself alternated between direct royal control and fairly autonomous rule by the Calabrian nobility. Eventually, in 1460, the king of Naples reasserted control over Catanzaro and gave it significant new privileges. This helped usher in a very successful era for the city, with the silk production reaching its peak in the 16th century.
By this time, the Kingdom of Naples was long since a constituent country of the Spanish Empire, but from the second half of the 16th century onwards the Spanish kings overextended themselves militarily. The monarchy was so deeply in debt that it repeatedly defaulted on its loans, and rather than making sensible decisions such as avoiding getting bogged down in a war in the Low Countries for almost a century, the response was to increase taxes throughout the empire. As a result, it became increasingly difficult for Catanzaro to compete internationally, and with the overtaxation starting the long decline of southern Italy, the domestic market also shrank further and further. Thus, silk production in Catanzaro went into terminal decline, finally disappearing somewhere around the time of Italian unification in 1860.
The remainder of Catanzaro’s history is not especially notable. It has remained an important regional centre, alternating with Reggio Calabria as the Calabrian capital (Catanzaro regained this status in 1970), but as with most of southern Italy, it is simply not doing particularly well (in fact, after a period of rapid growth after WWII, it has lost 15% of a population that peaked north of 100000) and that’s a story that becomes repetitive and a bit demeaning if I point it out with every place in southern Italy in every Giro. An example of the region’s problems can be found in 1961, when one of the darkest pages of the city’s history occurred. Just outside of town, a train derailed on a high viaduct, crashing to the bottom of the valley and killing 71 passengers. The investigation found that the train had been travelling at almost double the 35 km/h maximum speed that had been imposed due to the poor state of the track; the train driver’s defence was that this had been caused by the poor state of the brakes.
In the Giro, Catanzaro has been a host on eight previous occasions (two of which were in its seaside suburb), most recently the aforementioned 2016 stage.
(picture by LIL.PAOLO at Wikimedia Commons)
The route
The stage starts by heading west towards the Tyrrhenian Sea. The roads are not the most exposed, but it’s worth noting that Catanzaro is known for its wind in general and its southeasterly winds at this time of year in particular. Just west of the city, there is a very low pass in the southern Apennines at Marcellinara, which is crossed at the very start of the stage after a minor climb (5.5k at 3.2% including the initial false flat). The route then descends into the former marshlands of the Piana di Sant’Eufemia, before reaching the Tyrrhenian coast 33 kilometres into the stage and turning right to follow it northwards.
The next 47 kilometres are along the shore, until the road turns inland for the intermediate sprint in San Lucido and the ensuing climb up to Cozzo Tunno. There are three ways to reach this summit from the west, and unfortunately they’ve picked the easiest one. This ascent matches the profile below, except that we don’t do the final 600 metres of it and the KOM comes after 14.5 kilometres. It should get rid of a lot of riders, but doesn’t lend itself to attacking racing.
Finish
After an irregular, but fairly straightforward descent, there are 25 kilometres left to go, all of them in the wide, urbanised Crati valley. At the head of this valley sits Cosenza, the main city in the region and today’s finish. From the profile, it looks like things drag uphill after the bonus sprint, but aside from the very end it mostly averages about 1%. After a long section without much to stretch things out, the actual finish is very technical: although the roads are decently wide, we have six ninety-degree turns and three roundabouts (they go left at one and straight at the other two) in the final 1.6 kilometres. The two last right-handers are a bit tight, the others are more sweeping. The latter right-hander is the final turn and comes at 400 metres to go, with the ensuing final straight averaging 3.7%.
Founded in the 8th century BC, Cosenza owes its early rise to the combination of a reasonably fertile plain and being too difficult to access from the coast for the Greek colonisers. Hence the Italic tribe that dominated what is now the Calabrian hinterland, the Bruttii, made it their capital in the 4th century BC. The Bruttii were more than capable of holding their own against the Greek cities, but the growing power of Rome proved to be a different story. They were subjugated after fighting on the losing side during the Pyrrhic War (280 – 275 BC), and after rising again during the Second Punic War, Cosenza (then Consentia) was punished by having its political power crushed. Only after Romanisation did it have its city rights restored, after which it developed once more into a regional centre.
Then as now, Calabria was not one of the more important parts of Italy, but Consentia still gained a claim to fame at the tail end of antiquity. At the start of the 5th century, the ailing Western Roman Empire was less and less able to fend for itself, and more and more reliant on alliances with invading barbarians to hold off other invading barbarians. Perhaps the militarily most powerful group of the age were the Visigoths, led by Alaric. From 391 onwards, he was alternatively allied with the Western Roman Empire, with the Eastern Roman Empire, fighting against either of the two, or a combination of the above. Alaric’s preferred option was to establish a power base within the Roman world, not to destroy it (it should be noted that he was a Christian), an, but fate decided otherwise. In 408, his allies at the western court were massacred. This had the twofold effect of enraging Alaric and driving the vast majority of fighting forces in Italy into his hands. After a two-year standoff that involved an aborted siege of Rome and multiple failed negotiations, Alaric marched on Rome again and this time, he sacked it. While Rome’s political role had withered and the Vandal sack some decades later would be much more brutal, it was a seminal moment in the fall of the Empire nonetheless. But for Alaric, it was hardly a victory either – all ties with the Empire were now irreparably damaged, and there was no clear place for him or his men to settle. He headed south next, but in 411 in Consentia, he fell ill and died. The Visigoths were eventually allowed to settle in Aquitaine and wound up establishing a kingdom that ruled all of Iberia.
Cosenza itself survived the onslaught of the age and retained its administrative and practical central function, but together with the rest of Italy, was heavily depopulated during the endless wars of the 5th and 6th century. Southern Italy was spared of the initial Lombard invasion towards the end of the latter, remaining part of the Eastern Roman/Byzantine Empire, but their 21-year war to (re)conquer Italy from the Ostrogoths that preceded it was perhaps the most damaging of all, and affected all of the peninsula. Cosenza was eventually taken by the Lombards in the second half of the 7th century, which was as far south as they ever advanced. For the next few centuries, Cosenza’s function was therefore mostly as a military border town, until the arrival of the Normans in the 11th century swept the Byzantines away, asserted control over the Lombards and eliminated the border.
From that point forward, the broader political context for Cosenza becomes similar to that of Catanzaro, so we can focus on the city itself. In the 12th century, when the Kingdom of Sicily was under control of the Hohenstaufens, their most famous ruler (Frederick II) initiated great economic and urban development. In the 16th century, one of the main learned societies of the Italian south, the (still extant, albeit in a much-reduced form), Accademia Cosentina, was established here. This academy gave the city considerable cultural importance, especially under the auspices of Bernardino Telesio, a key forerunner of modern empiricism. The city’s academic tradition lives on today in the University of Calabria, which has grown to 35000 students since its establishment in 1972. This was the height of the postwar development of Cosenza, which saw the population grow from 40000 to 106000 by 1981; especially in the two following decades, depopulation was rapid and Cosenza only has 64000 inhabitants today. Aside from the university, tourism is a notable pillar of the economy: the city is the most-visited in Calabria. It hosted the Giro ten times until 1989, but since then, the only stopoff had been a stage start in 2013.
(picture by Giorgio Grano at Wikimedia Commons)
What to expect?
A tough one to call. Normally speaking this would either be a day for the Matthews-type sprinters or the breakaway, but there are barely any of the former in this field and it might be too early in the race (especially on such a short stage) for the latter. Although both options are still very possible, that might open the door for a slow ascent and a much bigger sprint than ‘should’ happen with a final climb of this size.
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram