Curated Itinerary
The Camino Francés: from the Pyrenees to Santiago
The heritage spine of the Camino Francés: Pyrenean passes, pilgrim bridges, the cathedrals of Burgos and León, Gaudí at Astorga, and the granite finale at Santiago.
Take this route into Google Maps
From Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port
to Santiago de Compostela Cathedral – Virtual Tour 360°,
in the order we curated them.
Google Maps takes 11 points in one route: this one uses 11 of the 15 stops, spaced along the way. The full list is below.
It opens in the Google Maps app with every stop already loaded, in the order we put them in. From there the route is yours: pick how you travel — on foot, by bike, by public transport or by car — change where you start and where you end, drag the stops into a different order, and add places of your own along the way.
This itinerary follows the Camino Francés, the classic line of the UNESCO-listed Routes of Santiago de Compostela (Spain 1993, French routes 1998): roughly eight hundred kilometres from Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port over the Pyrenees to the cathedral of Santiago. Fifteen stops mark its heritage spine — pilgrim bridges and hospital towns, the cathedral trio of Burgos, León and Santiago, Gaudí’s Astorga palace, the iron cross of Foncebadón and the fog-bound hamlet of O Cebreiro.
The sequence is the walker’s own, west by daily stages; but the route serves drivers equally, as the towns line up along parallel modern roads. What connects the stops is function: everything here — bridge, church, hostel, town plan — was built to move people west and keep them alive doing it.
Walk it in five to six weeks, drive it in under a week, or walk the last hundred kilometres from Sarria past Samos for the certificate. Book beds ahead outside winter, and let the cathedrals set each day’s timetable.
Read the full story of this route in the CHO Magazine →
Get this route — explore at your own pace
The walk and the notes are open to everyone, right here. To take the route with you — the GPX and KML tracks for your phone — you need a CHO account, and a free one is enough. We do not sell these routes: we build them ourselves and give them to the people who read us.
Create a free accountAlready have one? Log in.
This route was built with the tools we give operators.
Guides, associations and cultural operators build their own routes here: pick the stops from the archive, add your notes, and the map, the GPX and the printable version come out on their own. Your programme gets a permanent page, your events go on the city pages people read while planning — and if you sell your route as a road-book or a virtual tour, you receive 80% of the price net of tax.
See how an operator account worksBefore you go
A word from your host
You do not have to walk it all — but walk some of it. Two hours on the path out of any stop teaches more about this listing than every cathedral combined. And leave a stone at the Cruz de Ferro; the pile is a thousand years of other people's reasons.
Getting around
Walkers: five to six weeks whole, one week from Sarria for the Compostela. Drivers: the N-120 corridor touches every stop in five days. Spring and September are the seasons; the credencial opens the pilgrim hostels.
Step by step
Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port
A walled Basque town in the Pyrenean foothills and the second most popular starting point for pilgrims walking the Camino Francés to Santiago de Compostela.
Roncesvalles
A modest Pyrenean village in Navarre, Spain, positioned near the French frontier at 900 metres elevation on the river Urrobi, with a name echoed across…
Puente la Reina, Navarre
A pilgrimage town in Navarre where the French Way and Aragonese Way converge on the path to Santiago de Compostela.
Estella-Lizarra
Medieval pilgrimage town in Navarre founded in 1090, where Romanesque churches and a multicultural heritage mark the Way of St. James.
Santo Domingo de la Calzada Cathedral
A Roman Catholic cathedral dedicated to the Saviour and St Mary in La Rioja, Spain, standing at the heart of a historic pilgrimage village.
Burgos Cathedral – Virtual Tour 360°
The Cathedral of Saint Mary of Burgos is a masterpiece of Gothic architecture and one of the three great Spanish Gothic cathedrals, alongside those of Toledo…
Church of Saint Martin of Tours, Frómista
An 11th-century Romanesque church in Frómista, Spain, standing along the Way of St. James pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compostela.
León Cathedral
A 13th-century Gothic masterpiece in León, Spain, renowned for dissolving stone walls into one of Europe's largest medieval stained-glass collections.
Palacio Episcopal de Astorga
Gaudí began the bishop’s palace of Astorga in 1889 and left it in 1893; finished by Ricardo García-Guereta in 1913, the white-granite, fairy-tale castle…
Foncebadón
A medieval pilgrimage village in León, Spain, that nearly vanished by the 1990s but now thrives again as travellers rediscover the Way of St. James.
Ponferrada
Spain's second-largest city in León Province, Ponferrada straddles the Sil River and serves as the final major stop on the French route of the Camino de…
Villafranca del Bierzo
A medieval pilgrimage village on the Way of St. James, Villafranca del Bierzo sits between Ponferrada and O Cebreiro, 187 kilometers from Santiago de…
Pedrafita do Cebreiro
A Galician municipality on the Way of St. James, where the French route enters Galicia and pilgrims pass through O Cebreiro, a village preserving…
Samos, Lugo
A rural municipality in Lugo province, Galicia, Samos represents the quiet interior landscapes of northwestern Spain within the Sarria comarca.
Santiago de Compostela Cathedral – Virtual Tour 360°
The Santiago de Compostela Archcathedral Basilica is the culminating destination of the Camino de Santiago, one of the most important Christian pilgrimage…
Download for tour navigation
🔒 The walk and the notes are open to everyone on this page. The files to take with you — the stop list as a PDF, and the GPX and KML tracks for your phone — come with a CHO account, and the free one includes them.
Walk it with the navigator on
It opens in the Google Maps app with every stop already loaded, in the order we put them in. From there the route is yours: pick how you travel — on foot, by bike, by public transport or by car — change where you start and where you end, drag the stops into a different order, and add places of your own along the way.