The Giro is the first grand tour of the season and the hardest-weather one: three weeks in May, finishing with a week in the Dolomites and the Alps where snow at the Stelvio or the Gavia is a recurring possibility and stages are cancelled outright some years. The leader wears pink, after the paper that founded the race in 1909.
Watching is free. No attendance figure exists for a route of more than three thousand kilometres.
Two points of planning. The month is May; the race is sometimes listed in April, which is the Giro d'Italia Women or the spring classics. And the mountain stages are where the crowd concentrates — the high passes are occupied by campervans for days, and the access roads close early.
The route announcement each autumn is the event that governs accommodation in the Alpine valleys.
PlanningMay, not April. The route is announced the previous autumn and decides where the crowds go.