Truth be told, I’d rather have been walking, but if I had tried to choose where to be stranded I couldn’t have done any better than Santhià!

‎One of the nice things about this place is it’s a small(ish) town, and the hostel is in the centre of it. There’s a café owned by the president of the local “Friends of the Via Francigena” chapter 50 metres away, an excellent restaurant 200 m away (La Vecchia Taverna), the library is another 200 m beyond that (free, albeit painfully slow, internet), while the hospital is 300 m from the hostel in the other direction. The main street with bakeries, produce marts, convenience stores, pharmacies, cafés, banks, etc. is 50 m away, and this section is pedestrian only.  Oh, and the pilgrim’s hostel is run on the honour system, with a jar for pilgrims to deposit their €10 per night.

Since Vercelli is so close by train, I’ll be able to go to Liturgy each weekend I’m here. (Although I do need to contact the parish priest to find out about service times and the exact location.) And this morning, while chatting with the bilingual baristo at the local café, I realised I could take this enforced halt from the pilgrimage to visit both Turin and Milan! Santhià is almost exactly halfway between these two cities, and it’s an hour to either one by train. (The train station is about 500 m from the hostel.) I won’t be doing that this week, but in another ten days or so, I’ll likely be up for a day trip or two. 😀  My original plan had been to follow the Via Francigena directly to Rome, which meant missing out on Florence, Milan, Venice… Perhaps this affliction of pain has been a blessing in disguise! (Perhaps? No, I’m being coy when I say that. Most definitely a blessing.)

Tomorrow I will have to post photos of what I see when I walk out my front door. Hint: it’s nine centuries old, made of brick, and has bells in it.‎ The panoramic shot I’ve linked to below was taken from the west is what I have come to consider my front yard: the Piazza Roma. Okay, it may not be as grand as what I’ll see in Rome itself, but for a town of 8,000, it’s pretty impressive.

On the east side of the square, on the site which has had a church dedicated to St Agatha since the 4th century, is the main church of the town – also the church which gave the town her name. (Santhià is a linguistic corruption of Sancta Agatha.) The hostel is part of a row of residential buildings on the south edge of the square. To the west it’s a row of small businesses on the ground floor, including two from which a pilgrim can request a key for the hostel. (The other two storeys are also residential.) The north side of the square is the municipio (town hall), and a hostel key may also be had from “Il Comando Vigili Urbani” in the office there. (Doesn’t that sound like an awesome title?  It’s so prosaic when translated into English.)