Our Geo Quiz today asked you to name two European cities connected by an ancient pilgrimage route.
The Via Francigena began in Canterbury, England, and ended in Rome, Italy.
The old path is still there in Italy. But Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi wants to restore it, to make it more walkable. The World's Alex Gallafent has more.
The Italian prime minister used to be President of the European Commission. And perhaps that's a clue to Romano Prodi's support for restoring the Via Francigena.
You see, a pilgrimage route that crosses national boundaries is a perfect way of painting a perfect picture of a united Europe. The European Union played a role in sprucing up another ancient pilgrimage trail. That's the route to Santiago de Compostella, running from southern France to northern Spain.
"Compostella received support in terms of money, in terms of signing posting, that kind of thing, it was very much promoted as a symbol of EU unity."
John Eade is an anthropologist at Roehampton University in the UK. He says the Camino de Santiago, as it's known, has become a popular vacation choice. The location's certainly good, the walk takes you through some of France's greatest wine regions. Over 100,000 pilgrims walk the Camino each year. But only about 8 thousand travel the Via Francigena, even though it runs through Tuscany.
The road has fallen into disrepair. Sometimes the trails are narrow, and stretch through dangerous mountain areas. But it's a fair bet that if it gets spruced up a bit, the pilgrims will be encouraged to return.
"There's a lot of niche marketing going on with these international pilgrimages trying to position themselves by using their local advantages."
And that marketing attracts pilgrims from across the globe. But the word 'pilgrim' itself doesn't have a very precise meaning these days. Some people walk the ancient European routes because of their natural beauty. Some are attracted to a sense of shared history with the generations of people that have taken the same paths before. And some are religious pilgrims, working their way towards spiritually significant destinations like Canterbury or Rome.
Canadian photographer Peter Coffman didn't take specific religious beliefs on his pilgrimage.
Coffman: "Although having said that, I was certainly hoping that it would be a spiritual experience, spiritual in terms of the inner journey that one undertakes while taking this outer journey."
Coffman walked the Camino de Santiago a couple of years back. For him it was about the journey more than the destination. That's a different approach to the one medieval pilgrims probably took.
Coffman: "I guess in the middle ages, when there was a firm belief on the part of pilgrims that the relics of St James could intervene directly in their lives, then the destination itself would be extremely meaningful."
In Coffman's case, it was the journey itself that intervened in his life.
Coffman: "I'm not as stressed by uncertainty as I used to be."
Coffman says it's the walking that did it.
Coffman: "We live in an age when it's assumed by so many people that the world will come to you so long as you have a high-speed internet connection. And pilgrimage affirms stubbornly as it has for many many centuries that that is simply not the case. That some kind of spiritual growth, important lessons, are only leaned by going out into the world and experiencing it directly, hand on, in an unprepared state, in a sense."
Because, he says, you never really know what's waiting for you down the road.
