Upon crossing the Cisa Pass, for another 565 km pilgrims would travel before reaching Rome. Most of this route is through the large expanse of land known as Tuscany, almost 400 km of country paths and farm tracks and small paved roads. In the north the trail passes through some highly populated areas, but further south, the trail passes through barren hills where wheat is grown in the spring, dozen of small vineyards where grapes are harvested in the autumn. In between are castles, monasteries, abbeys and those famous hilltop towns.
Today the official route is comprised of 15 daily stages with which, six of those stages are 30km or more, with little places of accommodation and/or food and water. Thus, some decide to break the section in Tuscany, into smaller daily stages wherever possible. Or take one of number of alternate routes through this vast region.
Conversely, the route through Lazio is 165km and only 8 days with none of the stages more than 25km. Thus, this later section is popular with most first time Via Francigena pilgrims. It is only in recent years that modern day pilgrims have chosen to walk through Tuscany. Like the Camino de Santiago in Spain, most modern day pilgrims walk the last 100km into Rome in order to receive their Testimonium, a document similar to the Compostela received by pilgrims arriving in Santiago.
And very few people start at the Cisa Pass (it is not accessible by train or bus), so most start further north in either Fidenza or nearby Parma adding another 3-4 days to walk (approx 74km) to the pass itself
Overall, the total distance from either Fidenza or Parma to Rome is approx 650km, taking 28 days to walk.
It is such a vast region that passes through a number of smaller areas, each unique in their individual way - so much so that we will leave the details to a series of blog entries to follow.
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