All roads lead to Assisi in new St Francis pilgrimage network

Called the Cammino di Francesco, or Way of St Francis, the network connects existing trails through Abruzzo, Emilia-Romagna, Lazio, Marche, Tuscany and Umbria. The routes follow places associated with St Francis of Assisi, the Italian friar who founded the Franciscan religious order in the early 13th century.

Rather than following a single trail from one fixed starting point, travellers can set out from a variety of cities including Rome, Florence, Rimini (on Italy’s eastern Adriatic coast) and central Ascoli Piceno, with the routes ultimately leading toward Assisi, the Umbrian hill town where Francis was born in the 1180s and where his tomb is in the Basilica of St Francis.

Italy’s Ministry of Tourism unveiled the project recently, part of a €40 million (NZ$79 million) investment in the country’s walking routes and timed for the 800th anniversary of St Francis’s death in 1226.

The individual trails themselves aren’t new. What is new is that Italy has brought the various Franciscan pilgrimage routes into a more cohesive network and added them to the country’s official tourism platform where travellers can now find maps, stage-by-stage itineraries and other planning information in one place.

The network is designed to be entered from multiple points, allowing travellers to pick a section based on the number of days they have, the difficulty level they are comfortable with and which part of central Italy they most want to explore.

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Italy Launches Way of St. Francis Assisi Pilgrimage Trail (By Bailey Berg/Afar)