Officina Battaglin showed us two all-new bikes at Eurobike – this premium mixed-material Cortina gravel bike, and a Siena all-road bike that makes modern handmade Italian steel surprisingly affordable. The Cortina is a pretty big departure for Battaglin, well known for their classic brazed steel bikes, now bonding a bike with Italian-made carbon tubes, titanium tubes, and 3D-printed titanium lugs. The Siena on the other hand, is a mainstay for the Marostica frame workshop, but now modernized for all road riding and produced in batches to rein in cost.
Battaglin Cortina titanium & carbon gravel bike, made-in-Italy
The new Cortina gravel bike is quite unique in that it keeps the classic cast lugged looks of Battaglin’s traditional road bikes, but eschews both brazing and steel for an all-new construction optimized for a modern gravel bike.
The lugs themselves are 3D-printed titanium, shaped to match the custom-drawn & butted Columbus Hyperion 3AL-2.5V titanium tubeset and the made-in-Italy forged hi-mod carbon tubes. And since they were already bonding the carbon into the ti lugs, Battaglin decided to bond the tit tube & ti lugs together as a well, creating a string joint without subjecting the titanium to the high temperatures of welding.
This allowed Battaglin to craft the Cortina from exceptionally thin tubing. It’s so thin in fact (just 0.6mm thick at their thinnest point), that they have to reinforce the bottle cage mounting points with structural carbon plates to distribute the weight of a bottle over a larger surface area.
It’s true that Battaglin’s new Cortina is the first bike from the storied Italian frame-building workshop to be made from carbon and titanium. But it isn’t their first fully bonded frame. That milestone would go to the Roma road bike that debuted last summer, sharing very similar construction and styling, but with Columbus steel tubes, 3D-printed stainless lugs & similar carbon tubes.
Tech details
The new Battaglin Cortina gravel bike features 700c x 50mm tire clearance from straight seatstays and dramatically shaped chainstays.
It gets a T47 threaded bottom bracket, fully internal routing through the headtube,12mm thru-axles, flat mount disc brakes, and a UDH.
Battaglin Cortina gravel bike – Pricing, availability & options
The Cortina is 100% handmade in Italy, and comes in 5 stock frame sizes (XS-XL). Pricing starts at ~5490€ (4500€ excluding VAT) with a standard brushed finish to the titanium tubes & lugs. But since Battaglin loves their unique shiny cromovelato finish, you can always add some deep mirrored color to it, as an upcharge.
Officina Battaglin makes the frames to order. But they do a pretty good job of turning bikes over quickly, so a standard finish bike could be ready to ship in as short as one month’s time.
Battaglin Matera small batch Italian brazed steel gravel bike
We already covered the launch of the new production steel Matera gravel bike earlier this spring. But while looking at the super fancy Cortina, it’s also nice to remember that Battaglin builds much more affordable bikes in Italy, too.
This is a pretty modern steel gravel bike. Battaglin brazes it from custom Columbus Spirit HSS tubing with 50mm tire clearance, fully integrated routing, T47 BB, and UDH dropout.
And it comes in the same 5 stock sizes as the Cortina, but the Battaglin Matera sells for just 2562€ (2100€ without VAT) for the one color frame and matching fork.
Battaglin Siena small batch Italian brazed steel road bike
Just like the more affordable Matera, Battaglin will soon add a very similar Siena road bike too. Like all of their bikes, the Siena is 100% made-in-Italy in Battaglin’s Marostica workshop.
The story is almost exactly the same, just with more conventional endurance road bike geometry combined with space for modern wide all-road tires for added versatility.
With clearance for up to 700c x 35mm tires, the new Battaglin Siena will be perfect for mixed-surface road riding, quite fitting as Siena where Strade Bianche finishes after racing over Tuscany’s iconic white gravel roads.
Siena tech
The new Battaglin Siena gets all the modern standards you could hope for in a lightweight brazed steel all-road bike: fully integrated routing, T47 BB, and UDH dropout, and of course that 35mm tire clearance.
Even though the Siena is meant to be an affordable Italian steel road bike, Battaglin couldn’t resist building it up with the latest Campagnolo Super Record 13 wireless groupset. What better groupset for an Italian road bike than Campagnolo, right? And if you saved money on the frame, why not splurge of the gruppo and wheels!
But the Siena was also the first time we got to see the new Campy groupset’s new direct mount hanger designed to fit UDH-equipped bikes. By removing one link from derailleur to frame interface (like Shimano’s old direct mount derailleurs did), Campy says this will improve shift quality.
Like the Matera, the Battaglin Siena also sells for 2562€ (2100€ without VAT) for the one-color frame and matching fork – from 5 available colors. The bikes hasn’t yet launched officially, but you should be able to preorder one for delivery later this summer if you contact Battaglin directly.
