The Via Francigena was not designed as a walking route. It emerged over centuries as the principal road used by pilgrims, merchants, and armies moving between Canterbury — where Archbishop Sigeric of Canterbury began his famous return journey in 990 CE, recording each night’s stage — and Rome. The section from Lucca to Siena, which passes through some of the most characteristic Tuscan landscape, covers approximately 180 kilometres in seven stages and has been formalised in recent decades into one of the most rewarding long-distance walks in central Italy.
Walking it is not a religious undertaking for most contemporary travellers, though the pilgrimage infrastructure — the credenziale (the pilgrim’s document that records overnight stages with stamps), the hospitalero system, the community of fellow walkers — survives and gives the experience a structure that purely recreational hiking lacks. What it is, for most of those who walk it, is a week-long engagement with a landscape that is familiar from a thousand images and genuinely surprising in its texture and detail on foot: the quality of light through the cypress trees in the early morning, the smell of the earth after rain in the clay valleys, the medieval hill towns arriving in sequence as you move south from the Arno basin toward the Crete Senesi.
Before You Start: Practical Preparation
The walk from Lucca to Siena is classified as a moderate-difficulty long-distance route. The total elevation gain is significant — the Via Francigena crosses several ridge lines and the final approach to Siena involves a climb — but there are no technical sections and the surface is predominantly unpaved track, gravel road, and dirt path rather than either highway or technical mountain trail. A reasonable level of fitness and properly broken-in footwear are the two prerequisites that matter most.
The credenziale is available from the Via Francigena Association (AEVF), from several start-point hospitality providers in Lucca, and from pilgrim hostels along the route. It is not required but it provides access to the pilgrim hospitality network and the stamps that record progress through each stage. The final certificate — the Testimonium — is available in Siena for those who have walked the last 100 kilometres with stamped proof of each stage.
The route is well waymarked with the AEVF waymark (a red cross on white background, often with yellow arrows), though the marking density varies by section and a good map or the offline navigation app (several are available specifically for the Via Francigena) is advisable. The AEVF mobile app provides GPS-tracked routes and point-of-interest information and is the most reliable single navigation resource for the Italian sections.
Day One: Lucca to Altopascio (circa 25 km)
Lucca is one of the most complete medieval walled cities in Italy — the Renaissance walls are intact and wide enough to be used as a promenade by cyclists and walkers — and beginning the walk with a morning circuit of the ramparts before departure gives the whole enterprise an appropriate visual context: a city built for security in a landscape that is now peaceful enough to walk through freely. The departure from Lucca follows the medieval road south through the suburban fringe of the city before entering the agricultural plain.
The first section is flat — the Arno plain south of Lucca is reclaimed marshland — and the walking is more about accumulating kilometres and finding the rhythm of the day than about dramatic scenery. Altopascio, the first overnight stop, is a small town whose medieval function was as a pilgrimage hospice and whose Romanesque church tower is one of the distinctive landmarks of the route. Accommodation ranges from pilgrim hostels at around €15-25 per bed in a dormitory to small hotels at €50-80 for a single room.
Day Two: Altopascio to San Miniato (circa 28 km)
The second day introduces the landscape that makes this walk distinctive. Leaving the flat plain, the route climbs through the first of the Tuscan hills before descending to the Arno valley and crossing at Fucecchio or at one of the historic crossing points upstream. The Arno in this section is wide, slow, and lined with poplars — the valley floor has the quality of a productive agricultural landscape rather than a scenic one, which gives the subsequent climb to San Miniato al Tedesco a dramatic payoff.
San Miniato sits on a ridge with views north to the Arno valley and south toward the first of the characteristic Tuscan hill town profiles that will define the rest of the journey. The town was an important imperial seat in the medieval period — Frederick II built a tower here that gave the town its German designation — and the combination of views, architecture, and the particular quality of late afternoon light on a clear spring or autumn day makes it one of the more rewarding overnight stops on the route.
Day Three: San Miniato to Gambassi Terme (circa 25 km)
The third day is the first genuinely pastoral day: the route follows unpaved tracks through agricultural land and sparse oak woodland, with the character changing progressively as the Via Francigena enters the territory of the Colle di Val d’Elsa ridge. The views begin to acquire the particular Tuscan quality — rows of cypress, vine, and olive on the hillsides; distant tower profiles; the specific horizon line of this landscape — that the walk has been building toward.
Gambassi Terme, the overnight stop, is a small spa town whose thermal spring has been used since Etruscan times. The baths are available to pilgrims at standard rates and provide, after three days of walking, a recovery opportunity that the body generally welcomes with unambiguous enthusiasm.
Day Four: Gambassi Terme to San Gimignano to Colle di Val d’Elsa (circa 30 km)
The fourth day passes through San Gimignano — the most photogenic single point on this section of the Via Francigena and, accordingly, the most visited. The fourteen surviving medieval towers of San Gimignano rise above the surrounding countryside in a visual that has been reproduced millions of times and that retains its power on the ground because the scale and the setting register in ways that photographs cannot fully capture. Arriving on foot, from the north, with the tower profile assembling itself gradually over the final hour of approach, is a different experience from arriving by bus.
The town in the middle of the day in the main season is very busy — accepting this and engaging with it as part of the experience rather than resisting it produces a more satisfying stop. The vernaccia di San Gimignano, the local white wine, is one of the oldest DOC wines in Italy and drinking a glass at a bar on the main piazza, looking at the towers, is the appropriate thing to do. Continue to Colle di Val d’Elsa for the night — a working town with a crystal glassmaking industry and a historic upper town that receives a fraction of San Gimignano’s visitors despite being architecturally interesting in its own right.
Day Five: Colle di Val d’Elsa to Monteriggioni (circa 15 km)
A shorter day that allows either a late departure or extended time at both the start and end points. Monteriggioni is a medieval walled village — almost entirely circular, with fourteen towers on the circuit wall — that Dante used as a simile for the giants at the base of Hell in the Inferno. The walls are intact and the village inside, while small and touristy, has the quality of a place that is actually what it appears to be rather than a reconstruction. The afternoon and evening in Monteriggioni, waiting for the day trippers from Siena to depart, belongs to the resident community and the passing pilgrims — a combination that works.
Day Six: Monteriggioni to Siena (circa 18 km)
The final walking day is the most emotionally weighted, because the arrival in Siena is the conclusion of a week of movement and the profile of the city on its hill resolves, over the final hours, from abstract destination to specific architectural detail. The route enters through the northern gates and descends toward the Campo through streets that have not changed substantially since the medieval pilgrims who walked the same route for the same reasons. The Campo itself — one of the most successful civic spaces in European urban history, the shell-shaped slope of the piazza, the Palazzo Pubblico closing the lower arc — is where to sit, after the final day’s walking, and allow the sense of completion to find its own form.
Day Seven: Rest, Museo, and Departure
The final day is for Siena itself, which rewards the time: the Museo Civico in the Palazzo Pubblico contains the Maestà of Simone Martini and Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s Allegory of Good and Bad Government — one of the most politically instructive works of art in any Italian museum. The Opera del Duomo complex rewards several hours. The Contrade — the seventeen districts whose rivalry culminates in the Palio horse race — are still the lived reality of Sienese social identity and understanding the city through that prism, rather than as a heritage site, gives it a vitality that pure monument appreciation misses.
Logistics
The best months for this walk are April-June and September-October. July and August are hot — the central Tuscan hills hold heat in ways that make midday walking between noon and three genuinely uncomfortable — and San Gimignano and Siena are at their most crowded. May, when the landscape is green and the light is still relatively cool, is widely considered the optimal combination of conditions.
Daily costs: pilgrim hostels €15-25 per bed; budget hotels €50-80 for a single; mid-range hotels €80-130. Restaurant meals on this route range from €15-30 per person at most stops. The total budget for a week walking, staying in budget accommodation and eating normally, runs to approximately €400-600 per person including accommodation, food, and incidentals.
