5 days ago
Find a new reverence for Rome on a thousand-year-old pilgrimage to the capital
This article was produced by National Geographic Traveller (UK).
It's holy week and music is rising from the Chiesa di Santa Maria. First comes the slow sigh of baroque strings, then a wash of operatic harmony as a soprano and alto plunge into the opening lines of Pergolesi's Stabat Mater. Outside, a blood-orange sun is slipping behind the sage hills surrounding Vetrella, throwing a square of sunlight onto the church's frescoed walls: a honeyed beam that writes life into the eyes of every painted saint and martyr.
I'm coming to the end of my first day on the Via Francigena and already I'm getting a sense of the trail's strange power — though I'm 12 miles closer to Rome than I was this morning, I appear to have stepped further back in time. In many ways, it stands to reason. After all, I've spent the morning tracing one of Lazio's ancient holloways — the sunken roads etched by the Etruscans sometime between 800 and 300 BCE and deepened over the centuries by the footfall of Roman legions, Frankish knights and modern-day pilgrims.
After the concert, the congregation spills onto the lawn, where I get talking to blue-eyed Tiziano, who's travelled from the nearby town of Bracciano to be here. 'The springs surrounding this place made it a site of pilgrimage long before the church was built,' he explains, 'and yet most people pass it by without even noticing. For me, it's an overlooked masterpiece.'
The same could be said of the Via Francigena itself — a quiet backroad compared to the bustling pilgrim highway that's Spain's Camino de Santiago. The key difference is that the former didn't begin life as a pilgrimage trail, but rather evolved into one, its network of roads originally serving as arteries between the Roman Empire and northern territories like Britannia. The sunken roads etched by the Etruscans sometime between 800 and 300 BCE were deepened over the centuries by the footfall of Roman legions, Frankish knights and modern-day pilgrims. Photograph by Gilda Bruno
By the Middle Ages, any pellegrino (pilgrim) worth their communion wafer could be found traipsing towards Rome, where the spirit of St Peter was said to suffuse every root and rock. For the next few days, I'll be following in the footsteps of one such wayfarer: 10th-century archbishop Sigeric the Serious, no doubt a notorious party animal. In 990 CE, he travelled some 1,200 miles from Canterbury Cathedral to St Peter's Basilica — by way of France and Switzerland — to collect his official garment from the Pope. Handily, he documented his return trip, providing a blueprint for today's official Via Francigena route. Tackled in full it's a mammoth 100-day trek, so many pilgrims choose to walk key stages. My own journey takes in the last 60 or so miles to Rome, a five-day hike through cavernous valleys, emerald forests and rarely visited hilltop towns. The route is liberating in its simplicity — so long as I make it to my B&B each night, I should reach the Eternal City just in time for Good Friday. The wandering monk
Spring is a good time to be on the open road. Lazio is in the midst of a great transformation, the region's cobbled towns brimming with early artichokes, its boulder-strewn woodlands carpeted with anemone and pink cyclamen. Striking out towards the hilltop town of Sutri the following morning, I pass a gaunt, olive-wreathed farmhouse. The year's first swallows glide in and out, their long migration finally at an end. It's here I meet Brother Ambrose Okema, a Benedictine monk undertaking the Via Francigena by bike. For him, there's little difference between we pilgrims and the birds dancing above our heads, for we're all stirred to wander by the same invisible force. 'It's a call from within,' he says, beating a pulse on his chest.
Dressed in Lycra and sat astride a gravel bike, he's a far cry from your stereotypical wandering monk: the solitary, staff-bearing pilgrim whose effigy graces every waymark along the Via Francigena. His companion Victor Hernandez, a stubbled Puerto Rican, shows me footage from morning Mass on his phone; a priest in Tyrian purple robes using a garden spray pump to douse the congregation with holy water. 'You've gotta love Italy,' Victor says, beaming. The last 60 or so miles to Rome are a five-day hike through cavernous valleys, emerald forests and rarely visited hilltop towns. Photograph by Gilda Bruno Tackled in full the Via Francigena is a mammoth 100-day trek, so many pilgrims choose to walk key stages. Photograph by Gilda Bruno
We walk together for some time, descending into the Valle di Tinozza, where a jade stream guides us past rockfaces honeycombed with Etruscan tombs. Conversation flows easily on the road, and soon Ambrose is recounting his life story: the childhood in war-torn Uganda, his move to a monastery in America. I get the sense that this pair's pilgrimage is as much an act of friendship as it is of faith. 'I did the Camino de Santiago solo,' Victor tells me, 'so I knew I didn't want to do this trip alone. After meeting Ambrose at his monastery, it made sense to do it together.'
That evening, with 14 miles under my belt, I drink a Campari in Sutri's main square, its baroque fountain trickling sapphire. Beside me, an elderly man with thick-framed spectacles is filling his pipe, eyes cast skyward as the rain clouds part. A passing friend berates him for staying out in such conditions. 'La pioggia lava tutto,' the smoker replies — rain cleans everything. His words are still with me two days later. They echo something Sigeric and his fellow medieval pilgrims must also have felt to be true — that in enduring the elements they were somehow cleansing themselves. Call it purification by suffering.
From their howls of laughter, it's clear English pilgrims Maris Waterhouse and Sarah Thompson have no intention of suffering their way to Rome. 'We're not religious at all,' Maris tells me as we fall into step entering Insugherata Natural Reserve, a 1,800-acre patchwork of forest and farmland bordering Rome. 'Most of our lives are spent in the same routine — but this is something different.' With comically good timing, at that moment, a very large, very hairy wild boar emerges from the forest. I fleetingly wonder if he's here to enact revenge for last night's dinner, pappardelle pasta served with ragù di cinghiale, but he simply raises his snout, sniffs the air and trots off.
Our friend's habitat slowly recedes, giving way to glimmering shopfronts and warm-lit cafes — every table adorned with some limp-limbed pilgrim unable to move another inch. Their reluctance is understandable, as the Via Francigena has one more challenge in store: Monte Mario, Rome's tallest hill.
Praying for divine intervention, I crawl up its cobbled back; past silvery olives and flat-topped pines swaying in the afternoon breeze. I spot two peregrine falcons circling overhead, and then, quite without warning, catch sight of something I'd nearly forgotten: St Peter's Basilica, its gilded dome a second sun above the city's sweep of ancient spires. The final approach is like a dream, baroque avenues heavy with orange blossom giving way to the Renaissance splendour of St Peter's Square. Photograph by Gilda Bruno
The final approach is like a dream, baroque avenues heavy with orange blossom giving way to the Renaissance splendour of St Peter's Square. At this point, Sigeric would likely have commenced the obligatory circuit of Rome's other holy places — a pilgrimage within a pilgrimage.
But after a few moments of gazing at the basilica's gold-encrusted interior, Sarah's earlier words start ringing in my ears like a command: 'All I want from a trip like this is a long walk and a good meal at the end of it.' Within the hour I'm sat outside La Quercia, an osteria in Monteforte, stretching my legs beneath a table set with a bowl of smoky, parmesan-dusted pasta amatriciana. Dinner and a well-deserved rest. Some pleasures truly are eternal. UTracks' 10-day, self-guided Orvieto to Rome tour costs £950 per person, including B&B accommodation, meals and luggage transfers.
This story was created with the support of UTracks. Published in the September 2025 issue of National Geographic Traveller (UK).
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