Pilgrimage Routes

The California Missions are the name given to the chain of mission stations established among the American Indians of California by Franciscan missionaries in the latter part of the eighteenth and early part of the nineteenth centuries, beginning in 1769. The historic California missions were twenty-one in number, excluding branch foundations, extending along the coast or at a short distance inland from San Diego in the south to Sonoma, beyond San Francisco Bay, in the north. Father Junipero Serra founded, on July 16, 1769, the first in the chain of missions which extended from San Diego to Sonoma, a distance of about six hundred miles. This chain of missions, linked by the royal road known as El Camino Real ("The Royal Road"), became the spiritual and civilizational backbone of what is now the state of California.

The Camino de Santiago is a network of ancient pilgrim roads that all end at the tomb of the apostle St. James. Its most walked branch, the Camino Frances, runs about 790 kilometres from the French Pyrenees across northern Spain.