Via Francigena Toscana

The Tuscan stretch of the Via Francigena runs for over four hundred kilometres, from Pontremoli to the border with Lazio, crossing a sequence of landscapes that shift with latitude and season. In the province of Siena alone the route covers roughly a hundred and twenty kilometres, passing through villages such as San Gimignano, Colle di Val d'Elsa, Monteriggioni, Buonconvento, San Quirico d'Orcia and Radicofani, along with a variant that climbs toward Abbadia San Salvatore. The route largely follows the Lombard road walked by pilgrims heading to Rome as early as the year 1000, and the account of Archbishop Sigeric of Canterbury — who in 990 recorded the stages of his journey home from Rome — remains one of the founding documents of the official itinerary.

The variety of landscape it crosses is what sets this route apart from many other Italian paths. North of Siena the terrain rolls between the vineyards of Chianti and the valley floors of Val d'Elsa, where Romanesque parish churches emerge from the vegetation with the discretion of buildings made to last rather than to be seen. Heading south past Siena, the landscape changes: the Crete Senesi open into stretches of grey clay cut by calanchi ravines, almost bare of trees, the hills repeating in a spare, austere geometry. Further on, the Val d'Orcia — recognised as a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2004 — brings rows of cypresses and white gravel roads that trace the ridgelines. These are landscapes that have existed in their present form for centuries, shaped by an agriculture that has kept to a human scale.

Those who walk the Francigena encounter a network of places hard to reach by car: stretches of white road crossing isolated farms, country parish churches open only at certain hours, villages such as Monteroni d'Arbia or Castiglione d'Orcia where daily life carries on indifferent to the passing walkers. The slowness of the pace — between twenty and thirty kilometres a day for those following ordinary stages — restores to the land a scale that motorised travel erases. The distances between one settlement and the next become perceptible again as distances, and the landscape stops being a backdrop and becomes a measure.

The Tuscany Region promotes the Slow Travel Fest along the route, an annual circuit of outdoor events involving local operators, hostels and accommodation spread across the stages. The infrastructure of the walk — signage, stage points, services for pilgrims and cycle travellers — has been steadily consolidated in recent years, making the route accessible even to those without specific experience of long-distance walking. The Via Francigena can also be travelled by bicycle, with some paved variants running alongside the more demanding unpaved stretches. In both cases, the pace set by the means of travel — on foot or on wheels — shapes an experience of the land that has no equivalent in other forms of journey.