Italy – An artistic ride: Mogol & Battisti

We would like to remember the great singer-songwriter Lucio Battisti …. who died exactly twenty years ago, on September 9, 1998, far from the cameras and the media hype. If we remember him as a songwriter, it seems superfluous and useless, but we would like to remember his great love for horses, which culminated in the famous trip from Milan to Rome in 1970 with Mogol. They both trained hard during the period before the trip to Cascina Longora, they had taken this undertaking very seriously and had rode at least for two or three hours a day, in the surrounding countryside and the villages of Landriano, Pairana, Bescapè. The route to follow was established by consulting the military maps that indicated the practicable paths, from Carpiano southwards towards Pavia until reaching Castel San Giovanni.

It was necessary to reach the sea near Sarzana, near La Spezia, taking advantage of the little-traveled roads that the area offered in that stretch. Discover now all our trips, tours, holidays and horse trekking in Italy. From here towards Versilia up to Rome along the Aurelia along the coast to benefit from a cooler climate. One day,  they finally left with their horses Pinto and Ribattevo. With many unforeseen events, they managed to reach Rome by covering stages of about 30 km a day. Neither Battisti nor Mogol liked horses that much, so why did they embark on an undertaking of this type, demanding even for experienced riders? The answer is given by Battisti himself, in a 1970 article published on TV Sorrisi e Canzoni: “The spirit is to prove to ourselves that we can do it, and to enjoy, without worries, a true contact with nature, to cure ourselves a little of the diseases of our working life, in a hurry and agonizing race against time. So I say: “There is no time? Let’s get it. “