The Via Francigena: The Story of a Medieval Superhighway
Globetrotting in the Middle Ages
Great St Bernard Pass in Switzerland
All Roads Lead to Rome
As the famous saying goes, ‘All roads lead to Rome’.
One of the oldest and most remarkable of these is the Via Francigena, a route that stitched together the great landscapes of Europe long before the age of rail or motorways. Stretching some 3,000 kilometres from Canterbury to Rome, the Via Francigena crosses five countries, 16 regions and more than six hundred towns and villages. It moves from Alpine passes to Tuscan hilltops, binding together diverse lands through a shared artery of movement.
Over time, this single road played many roles. It was first a prehistoric and Roman trade link between north and south, then a medieval pilgrimage route to the Eternal City, and later one of Europe’s most important commercial thoroughfares. For merchants, soldiers, pilgrims and popes alike, it was nothing less than a medieval superhighway.
From Prehistoric Tracks to Roman Roads
The origins of the Via Francigena lie in the prehistoric tracks forged across the Alps. Celtic tribes such as the Helvetii established early trade routes, particularly over the Brenner and Great St Bernard passes. By the Late Bronze and Early Iron Ages, these routes connected northern tribes with the resources of the Italian peninsula, carrying amber, salt and metalwork across forbidding mountains.
Canterbury Cathedral, the starting point of the Via Francigena
With the expansion of the Roman Empire, the paths were transformed into permanent arteries. Augustus’s conquest of the Alpine peoples at the turn of the 1st century CE secured a road over the Great St Bernard Pass and a mule track from the Simplon Pass, binding Italy more firmly to the Rhône and Rhine valleys. For the Romans, roads were not only a means of military control but also a tool of commerce and communication. The city of Aosta, the capital of the small region of Aosta in Italy, is an outstanding reflection of Roman settlement. This legacy endured: centuries later, medieval Europe’s prosperity still rested on Roman foundations.
Teatro Romano, Aosta, Aosta Valley
Roman infrastructure endured long after the Empire fell, repurposed for war, commerce and faith. Monastic orders such as the Cluniacs and Cistercians later maintained stretches of the road, keeping alive a system of communication vital for medieval Europe’s political and spiritual life. Their abbeys, deliberately placed on the Francigena, became both waystations and centres of culture.
A Road of Armies and Pilgrims
By the early Middle Ages, the road was both a strategic and spiritual lifeline. Charlemagne famously crossed the Great St Bernard Pass with his army when summoned by the Pope to confront the Lombards. His crossing helped enshrine the route as the main axis between northern and southern Europe. From then on, armies, merchants and missionaries flowed along the Francigena, lending it its name—the “road from France.”
Yet it was pilgrims who gave the route its soul. By the 10th century, the cult of the saints and the promise of indulgences brought thousands southward to Rome. Pilgrimage was both a religious duty and a social phenomenon. For the humble believer, it meant remission of sins and the hope of divine favour. For nobles and kings, it conferred prestige and sanctity.
Pilgrims along Via Francigena, bas-relief from Saint Domnius' Cathedral, Fidenza
The English Archbishop Sigeric the Serious, who travelled to Rome in 990 to collect his pallium, provides the clearest record of the route. On his return journey he listed 80 resting places, or mansiones, across France, Switzerland and Italy. His simple two-page itinerary remains one of the great travel documents of the Middle Ages, and the modern Via Francigena largely follows his path.
By the Jubilee Year of 1300, Rome welcomed an estimated two million pilgrims. The Via Francigena was at the height of its renown, rivalling Santiago de Compostela and the roads to Jerusalem as one of Christendom’s most important ways of faith. Many continued beyond Rome along the Via Appia to the ports of Apulia, embarking for the Holy Land.
St Peter's Basilica in the Vatican City holds one of the destinations of the pilgrimage, the tomb of St Peter the Apostle
Cities, Monasteries and Markets
The Francigena reshaped the landscapes through which it passed. Towns prospered by catering to pilgrims and merchants, building hospitals, abbeys and cathedrals. Wealth flowed in, and with it came art, architecture and civic pride.
In Tuscany, Siena’s fortunes were inseparable from the road. Its Y-shaped layout, straddling three hills, made it a natural crossroads. Pilgrims, merchants and bankers converged here, and the city grew wealthy enough to rival Florence. Siena’s Duomo, with its striking striped marble, and the great hospital of Santa Maria della Scala, established in the 9th century specifically for travellers, both owe their splendour to the Francigena’s traffic.
View of Sienna main square from Tower Facciatone
Lucca, by contrast, had already been a Roman town but was transformed by medieval commerce. Its prosperity came from silk production and banking, industries that flourished thanks to the secure road connections. The city’s many churches—among them San Michele in Foro, whose elaborate façade became a beacon for travellers—testify to the way commerce and piety intertwined. Within, the relics of San Divino, a pilgrim who died in 1050, reminded passers-by of the journey’s fragility and sanctity.
The Holy Face, Cathedral of San Martino, Lucca | Photo by Joanbanjo
Even small hamlets experienced lasting change. At Abbadia a Isola, a Benedictine monastery was founded in 1001 at a crossroads between Siena, Volterra, Florence and Fiesole. Built on land donated by Ava, the widow of Ildebrando dei Lambardi, it was deliberately positioned as a submansio—a minor resting point documented in Sigeric’s itinerary. Its survival today shows how the Francigena seeded entire communities.
Benedictine monastery of Abbadia a Isola, founded at the start of the year 1000 and around which the village was developed
Communication, Culture and Commerce
The Via Francigena was not only a road for bodies and goods—it was also a conduit of ideas. A chronicler of the 11th century, Radulfus Glaber, spoke of a “white mantle of churches rising across the earth.” The phrase captures the way pilgrimage routes knitted Christendom together, spreading artistic styles and theological ideas along with relics and indulgences. Gothic architecture, monastic reforms, and even banking practices spread along these arteries.
Economically, the road became indispensable. From the 12th century, it linked Italian merchants with the Champagne fairs of northern France. Silks, spices and Eastern luxuries flowed northward, exchanged for Flemish cloth and northern silver. Banking families in Siena and Lucca financed these exchanges, using the Francigena as both physical route and symbolic guarantee of trust.
By the 14th century, however, the road’s fortunes began to shift. Florence drew Tuscan trade into its orbit, while Venice and Genoa developed maritime routes that bypassed overland traffic. The Via Francigena remained busy, but as a route of communication and diplomacy rather than bulk trade. By the 15th century, its value lay in speed and certainty: a corridor where papal envoys, merchants with letters of credit, and imperial agents could move swiftly across the continent.
Walking Through Time
Today, the Via Francigena is once again alive with travellers, although their motivations vary. Some come in search of spiritual renewal, others to savour the slower pace of walking across varied landscapes, and many to immerse themselves in the cultural treasures the road reveals.
The Great St Bernard Hospice, still maintained by monks, offers a palpable link to medieval hospitality. Lucca’s Roman walls and Siena’s Gothic squares remain much as they were when pilgrims trudged through them. Smaller, quieter places—like Abbadia a Isola near Monteriggione, or the still-active Cistercian abbey of Chiaravalle della Colomba—remind today’s travellers that this was a road of communities as well as capitals.
Abbey of Chiaravalle della Colomba in Alseno, Piacenza
To journey along the Via Francigena is to glimpse the Middle Ages in motion. It is to imagine mule trains of silk, barefoot pilgrims clutching rosaries, abbots welcoming strangers into candlelit refectories, and merchants tallying accounts in cramped townhouses. The road is more than a path—it is a living memory etched into the European landscape.
Switzerland to Rome
Tracing the Via Francigena
From the shores of Lake Geneva to the gates of Rome, spend 18-days following in the footsteps of medieval pilgrims, merchants, kings and emperors along part of the legendary Via Francigena.
Led by Dr Jeni Ryde, we’ll discover Roman ruins, ancient monasteries and imposing castles, all paired with the local cuisine that has defined these unique regions for centuries.
