Chemin français

Of all the pilgrimage routes to Santiago de Compostela, the French Way, or Camino Francés, carries the most walkers and holds the strongest claim on the public image of the Camino. It begins at Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port in the French Basque Country and runs 780 km west across northern Spain, crossing Navarre, La Rioja, Castile and León, and Galicia.

The opening stage climbs the Route de Napoléon over the Pyrenees to Roncesvalles, a pass associated with the eighth-century ambush recounted in the Song of Roland. Beyond Pamplona the route reaches Puente la Reina, where the Aragonese branch merges and the eleventh-century pilgrim bridge crosses the Arga. It then passes the wine country around Logroño and Nájera before the great cathedral cities of Burgos and León, both Gothic and both built in large part on pilgrim traffic. Between them lies the Meseta, some 200 km of high tableland with wide horizons, cereal fields and little shade.

The later stages climb to the Cruz de Ferro, an iron cross on a mound of stones left by generations of travellers, then descend through the Bierzo valley and rise again to O Cebreiro, a stone and thatch settlement at the Galician threshold. From Sarria, the last 100 km, numbers increase sharply, since that distance is the minimum qualifying for the Compostela.

Book V of the twelfth-century Codex Calixtinus describes this itinerary stage by stage, effectively serving as an early guide. Following centuries of decline, the route revived from the 1980s onward, and it was inscribed by UNESCO in 1993. Waymarking, infrastructure and albergue provision are denser here than anywhere else on the network.