![]() The city, where legend has it that the martyr St. The focal point and namesake of the Camino de Santiago is the city of Santiago de Compostela, located in Spain’s far northwest. ![]() Walking the Camino de Santiago: A Brief History (Mario Carvajal/Flickr) Ready to join them? Start with our guide. In 2023, roughly 442,000 people made the trek. This modern take on pilgrimage is only getting more popular: The number of people walking the Camino Francés has jumped from under 10,000 in 1992 to over 190,000 in 2012. Like any other long-distance walk, there’s a physical and mental commitment to the task, a simple rhythm of daily needs to meet. For me, a month-long hike sounded like an amazing challenge but an achievable one, too.īeing away from friends and family, work commitments, and an Internet connection gave me the time I needed to decompress and follow my thoughts to wherever they wanted to go there’s a kind of spirituality in that, too. The vast majority of pilgrims are on their own recreational or spiritual quests. Today, believers make up a small proportion of people walking the Camino de Santiago. But this was the real-life ending to my trip down the Camino de Santiago, a Catholic pilgrimage that was Medieval Europe’s answer to the Appalachian Trail. The hundred-year-old ritual taking place before me and the month-long walk I had taken to get there seemed like something out of a George R.R. ![]() ![]() I shuddered to think what might happen if the cord snapped, spilling 175 pounds of heated metal and 90 pounds of coal onto the crowd below Eight priests in heavy robes acted as the counterweight, controlling a rope as thick as my forearm. Its route is drawn throughout the north of the peninsula along 760 km, which are often divided into 31 stages that begin their journey in the French town of Sant Jean Pied de Port.ĭespite the fact that since the eleventh century pilgrims walked through northern Spain saving great difficulties and leaving behind an important cultural, artistic and social development, the most important increase in the French Way began in 1993, a Jacobean year that brought with it a very important revival of the Camino de Santiago as a tourist element, backed by the declaration of the Jacobean Route as the First European Itinerary of Cultural Interest by the Council of Europe and World Heritage by Unesco.A smoking silver thurible swooped through the gothic arches overhead, richly scented incense pouring from its sides. The French route is the most famous route in the world, the most traveled (in 2015 more than 260,000 pilgrims arrived in Santiago) and the best conditionedbecause of the economic potential it represents for the towns it crosses. The French Way is the most documented, existing since 1135 manuscript archives in the Codex Calixtinus, whose “Book V” is the first source of information on the cultural, religious and even tourist treasures that walkers could find in each of the sections that separated the tomb of the apostle from the main capitals of Europe at the time. HistoryĪfter becoming the most important pilgrimage route of Medieval Europe for the pilgrims who, moved by the Christian faith, walked towards the tomb of the Apostle Santiago in the city of Compostela, the French route was becoming more and more important until gaining the title of the most internationally recognized route and, therefore, the most important at an economic and social level. The other very common alternative is to start from Sarria, as it meets the more than 100 km required for the Compostela and can be covered in 5 days, very useful for people who start or have little time to enjoy the Camino. Within its great layout there are two very common starting points among the pilgrims, although the main start is the locality of Saint Jean Pied de Port, many decide to start the Camino de Santiago from Roncesvalles, to avoid crossingthe border between Spain and France, and not to climb the great slope that separates them. In addition, the convergence of personal and religious motifs, personal challenges and spirituality, Romanesque and Gothic styles, Templar castles and Benedictine monasteries, lush forests and murmuring rivers, medieval legends and Celtic magic They serve to erect themselves as one of the most amazing experiences that everyone should experience.
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