The Via Francigena

«The pathways of our ancestors are a great heritage. It really makes me angry that we do not have pilgrims walking towards Rome any longer. To rebuild the great pilgrims' path we do not need great investments, but heart. I am pressing everyone to make it happen."

In 2006, Romano Prodi (in his role as Italian prime minister) vowed to restore the via Francigena to its former glory. A 7 million Euro budget for ancient roads was set aside to restore the Francigena in Italy and in 2007, Romano Prodi held a ceremony to unveil the first in a series of over 1,500 signs due to be posted along the route.

Since then the work has continued through the appointment of Alberto Conti (director of ItinerAria, a company specializing in the enhancement of “slow tourism”, on foot or bicycle) who has defined the route and is currently managing the installation of signs every 300 metres. His primary focus being «Route upgrade, cooperating with local agencies and municipalities to improve safety and to go as far as possible from traffic roads.»

In preparation for this 2009 edition of the LightFoot Guide from the Summit of the Great St Bernard Pass to Rome, the authors have physically examined the route made a virtual tour of the entire Italian route comparing the routes in our 2008 guide with that which has been published by the Cultural Department. The overall conclusions are as follows:

The Route The official route is a great improvement over all previous routes and benefits significantly from being recommended and owned by the local communities or local branches of hiking groups such as the CAI (Club Alpino Italiano).
The route succeeds in continuing to reduce the amount of the journey needed on the busy SS and SP roads and where this is unavoidable specific recommendations have been made to the ministry and the communities for additional safety measures.
Some route improvements come at the cost of additional distance and sometimes more strenuous hiking. In this 2009 edition the authors have exclusively adopted the official route where there is clear advantage for all groups (hikers, bikers and horse-riders). But where the official route is too challenging for one or more group, alternatives are offered.
The signing activity is being undertaken at a community level and the examples seen by your LightFoot guide authors were excellent. However at this time a number of communities have yet to undertake the work and so the signs can abruptly stop at a community frontier. The outstanding work is due to be completed by summer of 2009, but this will depend on local cooperation. Pilgrims should not plan to depend on the signs alone as there is already evidence of erosion/vandalism of installed signs.
Ministry signs are the default design, but the signing standards do vary from community to community. For example in the Aosta valley the existing yellow footpath signs are supplemented with a pilgrim logo, while in the area around Fidenza the community uses a small format sign with the pilgrim and stars of Europe. From Aulla to Luni the red and white CAI signs are dominant.

The work undertaken by the Ministry can only be seen as an excellent step forwards in the maturity and safety of the route. They and ItinerAria should be congratulated on a first-class project.