Via FrancigenaThe Via Francigena is the historical itinerary from Canterbury to Rome: an itinerary of Faith crossed in the past by thousands of pilgrims. This was especially at the beginning of the second millennium, when Europe was covered by a multitude of souls "looking for their Lost Heavenly Home".
The Via Francigena witnesses the importance of pilgrimage in medieval times. Pilgrims used to travel mostly on foot (for penitential reasons): they used to walk 20–25 kilometers per day, driven by devotional reasons: the pilgrimage to the Holy Places of the Christian religion. The great poles of attraction for that journeying humanity were three: the most important was Rome, site of the martyrdom of Saints Peter and Paul, then Santiago de Compostela, where the apostle Saint James had chosen to rest in peace and obviously Jerusalem in the Holy Land. Pilgrims did not travel alone but in groups, carrying the pilgrimage emblems (the shell for Santiago de Compostela, the cross for Jerusalem, the key for St. Peter's in Rome).
These paths of pilgrimage were places of repentance and devotion, but at the same time, they were also intense trading routes and even important routes for the Armies. It's impossibile to define a clear and precise path along the Via Francigena because there has never been a "Via Francigena" as we might call a road today or in Romans times: in fact, in medieval times the concept of "road " was very different from the contemporary one or the Roman one. In medieval times fixed reference points were joined by tracks, which could undergo several changes depending on the need to transit to a location rather than another, on climatic, seasonal or security reasons and so on. The result was a network of trails branching off the area where they all converged on certain focal points. Through these sites, many of which are preserved up to now, we can find a tangible sign of the Via Francigena.
They were mostly places caring for pilgrims along the road (hospitia, hospitales): religious buildings of course...but also: bridges, fountains, sometimes also paved roads, which nowadays cannot be always considered real medieval artifacts because of the continuous maintenance works through the times.