Plans shifted late in the game, but it was all for the best. Originally, I had anticipated a much longer walk today, pushing all the way to Palmanova, but the only affordable accommodation in that popular tourist spot cancelled on me. Udine, the largest city in Friuli, suddenly became the better fit, and once I arrived that change elicited equal measures of satisfaction and relief. The former, because Udine turned out to be a thoroughly lovely town, filled with pleasant piazzas; the latter, because the process of arriving there was fairly bleak.
When I’m “freestyling,” or walking off-route between towns, I can usually construct a viable, inoffensive, and often enjoyable-enough plan. There’s always some give-and-take involved. For example, is it better to take the direct route on a paved road with auto traffic, or the unpaved track that’s twice as long? The answer, as always, is “it depends.” Unfortunately, this region is squeezed into a narrow stretch of arable land between the mountains, the Tagliamento River, and the Adriatic Sea, so there’s not much in the way of open space. As a consequence, I found myself at multiple points walking along a shoulder-less highway as the rain whipped away, trying to get it over with as fast as possible.
For all my complaints about some parts of the Cammino di Sant’Antonio, I suppose they weren’t so bad after all!
Speaking of which, given all of the above, this is a great opportunity to look back on the Cammino di Sant’Antonio and offer a summary of key takeaways:
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- Technically, the Cammino di Sant’Antonio (CSA) begins in Capo Milazzo, Sicily, following his journey there from shipwreck to the Franciscan gathering in Assisi, and then onward north. However, no signage or other infrastructure exists related to the route in Southern Italy
- Pilgrims walking the Cammino di San Benedetto and Via di Francesco will see CSA waymarks all along those routes. I don’t know how much documentation exists on Anthony’s northward walk, so I imagine it’s a prudent choice to just piggyback on those routes
- My suggestion is to think of the CSA in a similar manner to the Via di Francesco, with two routes meeting in the middle at the major shrine–Padua/Padova in this case
- The more prominent half of the CSA runs from La Verna to Padua. This was developed first, in 2010, it’s the most visible route on the main CSA webpage, and it has the most pilgrim facilities
- The CSA organizers have broken this into 23 stages, including “the last walk” (Padua-Camposampiero) which is actually the last stage coming from Gemona. By my count, this covers 410km from La Verna to Padova, plus another 20km to Camposampiero
- Over the course of 15 nights, I was able to stay in pilgrim or pilgrim-friendly accommodation on 10 nights in this section. Two of those ten nights required some special coordination, outside of typical communication
- The biggest accommodation challenge in this stretch is the cities–Bologna, Ferrara, and Padova. The CSA webpage has some suggestions, but I didn’t find them useful. Sometimes, that’s because the locations were super inconvenient, and the price differential didn’t make them worth the trouble. Sometimes, that’s because they were full (I hit Bologna and Ferrara on holiday weekends; bad luck on my part). I stayed in Venice Mestre instead of Padova–it was a lot cheaper, even with the train factored in
- Technically, the Cammino di Sant’Antonio (CSA) begins in Capo Milazzo, Sicily, following his journey there from shipwreck to the Franciscan gathering in Assisi, and then onward north. However, no signage or other infrastructure exists related to the route in Southern Italy
- The Gemona del Friuli to Padua/Padova route is much, much newer, founded in 2021. It seems like Gemona’s tourism sector took an active role in its development; they have their own website for the route
- This is broken into 11 stages, which I had totaling up to 257km
- Pilgrim accommodation is much harder to come by on this route, and the accommodation list provided by the organizers is almost useless. It only includes a single pilgrim accommodation–the medieval Hospital San Giovanni in San Tomaso
- I was able to arrange for pilgrim accommodation in Castelfranco Veneto, Polcenigo, Fanna (near Maniago), San Tomaso, and Gemona del Friuli.
- The official gps for the route diverged from the waymarks between Santuario della Madonna della Rocca and Susegana. Why? I have no idea. I stuck with the GPS, walking through Vidor and Falze di Piave, and I found it to be one of the more enjoyable walks in this section. I wonder if there are flooding issues at certain points in the year?
- The credential was a little tricky to get, but I arranged to have it mailed to one of my Italian hosts on the Benedetto and that worked out. It’s only available in Padua (and a couple other random cities not on the route), so if you’re starting in La Verna or Gemona, plan accordingly
- Stamps were mostly just available in churches. I had to hunt around in Bologna (there’s an outdoor travel info center around the corner from the tourism office) and Ferrara (the tourism office in the castle) to find stamps in those cities
- The Testimonium was very easy to obtain from the info office in the basilica in Padua
- I found the basilica in Padua to be a satisfying endpoint for a pilgrimage. The approach to Anthony’s tomb is nicely orchestrated, leading pilgrims past a montage of hundreds of faces of people who have sought out intervention, and then the reliquary display at the back is quite striking. I mean, you see Anthony’s vocal cords, tongue, lower jaw… it’s a visceral experience. Similarly, while Gemona is not on the same scale, the sanctuary offered a nice capstone to the Anthony narrative
- Waymarking was inconsistent. For the most part, it seemed quite good for those walking Padua→La Verna. Some days, it was excellent for me, walking in the other direction. Other days, the waymarks were missing at key intersections. Different stickers were used on the Gemona-Padua section and I found them to be a little easier to follow. The key detail I missed early on is that they have different color schemes for bike and pedestrian stickers, so take note of that!
- Walking quality was also highly variable. I loved the walk from La Verna to Bologna and would gladly do it again. Bologna to Padua was more of a grind–flat, paved, and with a fair bit of car traffic. Padua to Gemona depended on the day. The aforementioned walk through Vidor and Falze di Piave was a joy; ditto for the approach into Polcenigo and onto Maniago. Others were tougher to get excited about. At one point, I was beginning to harbor some regrets about shifting my plans to include this part of the Sant’Antonio, but by the end I felt like it had been worthwhile
- The major Anthony sites are mostly clustered around Padua–Camposampiero, Arcelli, Monselice. Montepaolo and Gemona are further out. Many other churches along the way, though, feature Anthony prominently. His presence along the way is not dissimilar to that of Santiago on the Camino, or Francis on the Francesco
- This is the route where weather made the biggest impact on the walk–first in the mountains, continuing from the tail end of the Francesco (the first stage of this route, La Verna-Camaldoli, overlaps with the Francesco), and then at the end, heading into Gemona. Emilia-Romagna, where the first half of this is located, has struggled significantly with landslides, and multiple parts of the Sant’Antonio were re-routed after landslides in 2023. I still encountered one on the trail that forced some evasive maneuvers. Track the CSA’s website and Facebook page for current info to make sure you don’t get blindsided
- I saw one other CSA pilgrim the whole time I was walking. When I commented on this to locals, they all had the same response–nobody walks this time of year. That said, things are starting to warm up. My hosts in Hospital showed me their schedule, and they had a handful of pilgrims slotted in over the next week
- There’s no chance of baggage shipment on this route
- The CSA overlaps with a number of different routes, beyond the ones already mentioned. Most prominent are the Via Romea and Romea Strata. The pilgrim accommodation in Castelfranco Veneto, Polesella, and San Tomaso caters to pilgrims on all of those routes. Also near Castelfranco Veneto is the Cammino del Beato Enrico. Near Polcenigo, it overlaps with the Cammino di San Cristoforo
- For a very fun walk, consider Montecassino to Bologna. That would include 230km of the Cammino di San Benedetto, 350km of the Via di Francesco, and 250km of the Cammino di Sant’Antonio. Not too different, distance-wise, than the Camino Francés + Finisterre
