Via Francigena

The Via Francigena is a main road traveled in the past by thousands of pilgrims traveling to Rome.

History has it that it was Sigeric, Archbishop of Canterbury, going to Rome to visit Pope John Rome and constituted one of the most important European communication routes in medieval times.

It was especially at the beginning of the second millennium that Europe was crossed by a multitude of pilgrims "in search of the lost Celestial Homeland".

It is known that there were three poles of attraction for this humanity on the move: Rome, place of the martyrdom of Saints Peter and Paul, founders of the Christian ecclesial community; the Holy Land, home of Golgotha, where the places of Christ´s passion were sought; Santiago de Compostela, the extreme tip of Western Europe, where the Apostle Saint James chose to rest in peace.

And so Europe was transformed into a great collector of roads, paths and routes, all converging towards places of pilgrimage. Access to Rome was ensured by perhaps the most important road of the time, the Via "Francigena" or "Romea" which, coming from the Western Alps and the Rhine Regions, was traveled for at least seven centuries by Sovereigns, Emperors, plebs and religious people. .

At that time the journey was not a simple adventure, it brought with it a devotional aspect: the pilgrimage to the holy places of the Christian religion.

Today we are able to reconstruct this itinerary thanks to a document left to us by Sigeric, Archbishop of Canterbury, who in 994, returning from Rome to his diocese, wrote a diary of the various stages touched during the journey.

It is no coincidence that, after a thousand years, we want to rediscover a path that represented the union and communication between the various cultures and ideas of the different countries of Europe which today sees the barriers falling, but which was already expressed even then, also through the paths along the Via Francigena, the desire and will to be united.

The path of the Via Francigena crossed the Alps in the Aosta Valley and descended from Piedmont and Lombardy into the Po Valley, crossed the Apennines towards Berceto, crossed Tuscany and Lazio to reach Rome.

Even today, fragments and memories of those itineraries that found the history of Europe can be found in our territories

http://www.viefrancigene.org/static/uploads/10_pannelli_90x180_aevf.pdf