The Road That Made Europe: Walking the Via Francigena

Long before the Camino de Santiago became the world’s most famous pilgrimage walk, there was another road — older, longer, and arguably more consequential. The Via Francigena is the oldest and most important medieval pilgrimage route connecting Northwestern Europe with the Italian peninsula and Rome. It runs roughly 2,000 kilometres from Canterbury Cathedral to St Peter’s Basilica, crossing England, France, Switzerland, and the full length of Italy. And right now, after centuries of near-obscurity, it is experiencing a remarkable revival.

A road with many names

The Via Francigena — literally “the road that comes from France” — was never a single road in the way a Roman highway was. It comprised several possible routes that changed over the centuries as trade and pilgrimage waxed and waned. Depending on the season, the political situation, and which Alpine passes were clear of snow, travellers might take any of several different crossings of both the Alps and the Apennines.

The route was established through Frankish territory in the centuries following the fall of Rome, as a direct and secure corridor with regular overnight stopping places — often fortified clusters of houses, many hosting small religious communities that provided accommodation for travellers. It went by different names: the Via Romea (the way to Rome), the Chemin des Anglois (after the evangelisation of England), the Chemin Romieu. But the destination was always the same.

In the medieval world, there were three great pilgrimages: Santiago de Compostela, Jerusalem, and Rome. The pilgrimage was a rite of passage, an act of social unity, and a personal process of repentance. Pilgrims to Santiago carried a shell. Pilgrims to Jerusalem carried a cross. And pilgrims to Rome — to the tombs of the apostles Peter and Paul — carried a key.

Sigeric’s diary

The route as we know it today owes its survival to a single document. In 990 AD, Sigeric, Archbishop of Canterbury, travelled to Rome to meet Pope John XV and receive the pallium — the woollen cloak symbolising his office. Since the 6th century, an archbishop could not exercise his ministry without it, so for Sigeric the journey was indispensable.

What made Sigeric different was that he — or more likely a member of his party — recorded the stages of the return journey. His De Roma ad usque Mare, preserved in the British Library, documents 79 stopping places between Rome and the English Channel, averaging roughly 20 kilometres a day. It forms the basis of today’s Via Francigena.

The manuscript nearly didn’t survive. When Henry VIII ordered the suppression of the monasteries in 1541, thousands of manuscripts were destroyed. But an antiquarian named Sir Robert Cotton — the same collector who preserved Beowulf and the Lindisfarne Gospels — recognised the diary’s value. His heirs donated the collection to England. Without Cotton, the route might never have been reconstructed.

The rise, fall, and return At its peak, the Via Francigena was one of the busiest corridors in Europe. In 800 AD, Charlemagne travelled down it to be crowned Emperor in Rome. During busy Jubilee years, over 20,000 people a day passed through the gates of Siena. Then it faded. After 1400, Florentine dominance rerouted the traffic. The Reformation weakened pilgrimage. The old main road of Europe degenerated into farm tracks. Stopping places lost their raison d’être — but a few, like San Gimignano and Pieve a Castello, survived. Revival began in the late 1980s. Giovanni Caselli re-mapped Sigeric’s route in 1985. In 1994, the Council of Europe designated it a Cultural Route. The real acceleration came when Camino veterans started looking for what’s next.

The numbers tell the story

Roughly 50,000 pilgrims walked sections of the Via Francigena in 2022. By 2024, nearly 6,000 received the Testimonium at St Peter’s, up from 3,319 the year before. The 2025 Jubilee Year supercharged this: more than 19,000 credentials distributed (+36%), over 12,000 Testimoniums. The foreign share has risen to 53%.

For context: the Camino de Santiago recorded over 530,000 pilgrims in 2025. The Via Francigena is still a fraction — which, for many walkers, is the point. Sharing experiences remains the top motivation (42.7%), followed by tourism (33.4%), culture (32.4%), and spirituality (24.3%).

ATG and the Via Francigena In 1976, Christopher Whinney walked from London to Rome following the Via Francigena. He walked 23 miles a day, stopping every fourth day, as the Romans did. In 1979, he founded ATG. Then came Pieve a Castello — purchased derelict in 1986, restored over 20 years. This 8th-century complex served as a major overnight stopping place on the Francigena for 700 years. It is today the oldest and best-preserved such place on the entire route. In 2000, ATG ran an escorted Canterbury-to-Rome trip for the millennium, walking the best sections through France and Italy in three weeks.

Walking it: Sutri to San Gimignano

The full route takes 90–100 days. But the Via Francigena lends itself to sections, and the stages through Lazio and Tuscany — ATG’s Via Francigena 990 itinerary — are among the finest walking country in Europe.

The route begins in Lazio’s volcanic landscape. At Sutri, a Roman amphitheatre carved from tufa and Etruscan tombs give an immediate sense of deep time. The route climbs through the forested Monti Cimini to medieval Viterbo, then follows paved Roman road to Montefiascone on its crater rim. Lake Bolsena opens up the landscape. The lakeside town — friendly, attractive, refreshingly untouristy — retains its medieval alleyways and 14th-century castle. From here, into the Val d’Orcia: undulating hills, scattered cypress trees, stone farmhouses.

San Quirico d’Orcia offers a fine Romanesque Collegiata. Nearby Bagno Vignoni’s central piazza is a thermal pool where Romans bathed on the Via Cassia — the Medici built the Renaissance arcades and took the sulphur cure here.

Through Brunello di Montalcino vineyards to the superb abbey-church of Sant’Antimo, then north through Siena — which the Via Francigena effectively created (the “daughter of the road”). From Siena through forests and farmland to Monteriggioni, still encircled by 13th-century walls and fourteen watchtowers. The final stretch passes pilgrim stations to San Gimignano, the “city of the towers,” then Pieve a Castello: the ancient stopping place, still welcoming travellers after 1,200 years.

Why now?

The Jubilee effect is real but temporary. The 2025 Jubilee drew millions to Rome and gave the Via Francigena unprecedented visibility. But the underlying trend will outlast it.

More fundamentally, there is growing appetite for turismo lento — slow tourism. People want experiences that are physical, immersive, and rooted in place. A long-distance walk through Tuscan countryside, sleeping in medieval villages and eating locally, offers something no beach holiday can match.

And the Camino effect: over half a million people now walk the Camino each year. Many finish and look for what’s next. The Via Francigena is the natural answer — comparable antiquity, far greater range, without the crowds. September is the preferred month; the Tuscan hills in early autumn are hard to beat.

A living road

There is something quietly powerful about walking a route continuously used for over a thousand years. The Via Francigena is not a museum piece. It is a living road — one that Charlemagne rode, that Sigeric recorded, that Christopher Whinney walked in 1976, and that a hundred thousand people walked last year.

For anyone who has ever felt the pull of a long walk, or wondered what it might be like to arrive somewhere under their own power, the Via Francigena is an invitation. After centuries in the shadows, the road to Rome is open once more.