History

The Francigena Way has represented during the centuries, since the tall Middle Age, the itinerary followed by the pilgrims of Europe of the center-north to reach Rome, center of the Papacy and heart of the Christianity. .

What today is known as “The Francigena of Sigerico Way” is the itinerary of 1600 km. (80 tappes) crossed in 79 days by the archbishop Sigerico in the year 990 to return to Canterbury from Rome after the investiture of the Archiepiscopal Pallium from the Pope Giovanni XV.

Sigerico, on invitation of the Pontiff, annotated all the stages, one for day, that brought him in Great Britain through Europe.

Its diary is therefore the most authentic testimony of the layout of the Way from Rome up to the Channel of that epoch.

This run in 2004 has been declared from the Council of Europe "Great European Cultural Itinerary", likewise to the Walk of Santiago de Compostela in Spain.

The appellative "Francigena" it didn't point out only a devotional layout to exclusive use of the pilgrims, but a street crossed by merchants, practices, political men and of culture, creating so a primary channel of communication and exchange and allowing all those interrelations that brought to the substantial unity of the European culture between X and XIII Secolo.

With the men and the commodities the Francigena Way brought the ideas, the technical and ideological innovations, favoring the comparison and the integrations of the various cultural tides.

The The Francigena of Sigerico Way becomes so an occasion for the knowledge of the European cultural identity in its historical, artistic and religious aspects over that a true opportunity of territorial exploitation of the crossed places.

Along this run they existed numerous stages for the comfort of the spirit and the body, for this inside the territory it is today still possible to meet a series of Romanesque testimonies that bring us to relive the suggestions of the ages.

And it’s in every case we cannot speak of Francigena Way as of a well defined layout, but of a whole roads and paths.

An ideal itinerary of base that connected the most known places existed therefore, while it is not being never known in the detail the run that united them, except that for some lines forced by the morphology of the territory.

The walk of the pilgrim was not therefore a single itinerary, on the contrary a net of roads and paths used according to the seasons, the political events and from the Religious Order of affiliation of the same wayfarers that often met swamps, marshes, draw of wood impenetrable, adverse atmospheric conditions, dangerous animals, banditry. These unforeseen event often forced the pilgrims to look for easier and sure runs, creating so innumerable local variations, firm the itinerary of base staying.

For all these reasons to choose a run among the so many today is not easy, therefore the choice of a journey that associates and keeps in mind of the different demands of the contemporary pilgrim, what for instance: the spirituality, the culture, the tourism, in partnership to a sure run, possibly away from the vehicular traffic and from the asphalt, with water's presence, services and areas of appropriate standstill.