Before dawn, the stone underfoot on Via San Francesco is still cool from the night, and the only sound is the scrape of a walking pole against thirteenth-century paving. Within the hour, the first pilgrims of the day will round the corner below the Basilica, packs on their backs, following a route that has led travelers into Assisi for the better part of eight hundred years. They are walking the Via di Francesco — and whether they know it or not, they are retracing one of Europe’s oldest and least commercialized pilgrim roads.
A Path Stitched Together From a Thousand Small Journeys
The Via di Francesco was never built as a single road. It grew, medieval fashion, from the linking of dozens of short local pilgrimages that had already existed for centuries around the hermitages and sanctuaries tied to Francis of Assisi’s life. Monks, farmers, and the devout moved between these places long before anyone thought to draw a continuous line on a map connecting them.
Today that line runs for more than 300 kilometers and roughly thirteen stages, beginning at the hermitage of Sant’Antonio a Montepaolo near Dovadola, in the hills above Forlì, and ending here, in Assisi. The northern stretches climb through forested Apennine passes with real elevation to earn; the approach through Umbria softens into gentler, sun-struck countryside. Along the way the route touches Portico di Romagna, Sansepolcro, Città di Castello, and Gubbio, and it threads several of the hermitages most sacred to the Franciscan story — Camaldoli, Montecasale, and above all La Verna, the mountain sanctuary where Francis is said to have received the stigmata. It is, in every sense, a pilgrimage before it is a hike: a road built to be walked slowly, with something in mind.
Slow Travel as the New Luxury
It is no accident that the Via di Francesco has found a second life among precisely the travelers who might once have booked a five-star resort and gone no further than the pool. A growing number of discerning guests now count a multi-day walk — earned, unhurried, a little uncomfortable in the right way — among the most valuable things a luxury trip can offer. The route can be walked from the north, out of Florence or Rimini via La Verna, or from the south, up from Rome, in twelve to fifteen stages of varying difficulty, on foot, by bicycle, or on horseback. Pilgrims who complete a qualifying stretch can collect an official Pilgrim’s Credential, stamped village by village, and a Testimonium Viae Francisci at the end — a small, handwritten proof that they walked the same ground as everyone who came before them.
What makes the Via di Francesco different from its more famous cousins in Spain and France is precisely its restraint. There is no vast pilgrim infrastructure here, no crowds funneling through turnstile attractions. The Franciscan spirit that shaped the route — gratitude for small things, generosity toward strangers, respect for the land — still governs how it is experienced: a handful of walkers, a village bar, a hermitage chapel with its door propped open, and then Assisi rising ahead on its hillside, more or less as it has for eight centuries.
Where the Path Arrives
This is precisely the story we want Via San Francesco Assisi to belong to when it opens its doors. Our hotel diffuso is taking shape across two historic buildings that sit almost literally at the point where the old pilgrim road meets the town — Edificio 48, “The View,” a building facing directly onto the Basilica di San Francesco, with a terrace built for the kind of view pilgrims once earned only by climbing; and Edificio 19, “The Convent,” a fourteenth-century former monastery whose medieval frescoes we are uncovering, room by room, as restoration continues. A pilgrim finishing thirteen stages of the Via di Francesco, and a guest who has simply flown in for a long weekend of quiet luxury, will arrive at the same threshold — and we intend for both to feel that the walk, however short or long, was worth taking.
Assisi does not need to manufacture its sense of arrival. It has had eight hundred years of people walking toward it for a reason. Our work over the next months is simply to make sure that when they arrive, there is a place worthy of the road behind them.
Follow the Restoration
We will keep sharing the story of Via San Francesco Assisi as the two buildings come back to life — the craftsmanship, the discoveries, and the history that surrounds them. Follow along and subscribe to be among the first to know when the doors open.