Since prehistoric times, when local resources were dwindling, ancient peoples found themselves in need of moving.
The survival or extinction of the group depended on the choice of direction.
Capable explorers were sent to find answers: hostile populations, availability of water, harshness, flourishing or inhospitable areas. The final decision, after a long consultation, was however always entrusted to the divinity: through obscure rituals, sacred men, in the initiatory signs that the deity sent to the people who honored it, interpreted the omens and gave the definitive answer. From that distant time and for the entire duration of our history, these movements continued in the alternating seasons, no longer towards the unknown, but in the perennial search for water and abundant food, along the usual routes of transhumance.
Even if the risks are much smaller, the tradition of shepherds and breeders asking for the protection of the Sacred persists, unchanged over time, even today.
The undisputed protagonist of this specific veneration in the three monotheistic religions – Judaism, Christianity, and Islam – has been, since ancient times, the Archangel Michael. The places of worship located at the departure and arrival points of the routes testify to this, and often, with diverse findings, sometimes crude yet poetic in their simplicity, also along the way.

The design idea, which arises from these reflections, is to create a thematic network that, starting from the Line of Saint Michael, unites the territories where the cult of the Archangel is practiced and where traces of ancient identity cultures persist.
The objective is to bring back to unity, around the Way and under the "aegis" of Saint Michael, the rich fabric and variety of the Material and Immaterial Heritage of the European agricultural, rural, and pastoral tradition, stratified over the centuries, into a for the first time interconnected tourism-cultural system, virtually explorable and traversable in every direction. The routes and local paths, already existing or under construction, are structured step by step and thematized, thus connecting to the Way even if distant from the main itinerary, contextualizing to the shared theme the presentation of their own cultural, natural, and artistic points of interest.
The Network of Saint Michael primarily utilizes the digital network, the web.
The territories that join organize themselves to present themselves in a single portal made up of various digital "rooms", one for each territory that thus becomes part of the experience of the Way of Saint Michael the Archangel.
They narrate and invite: they call groups of pilgrims, solitary trekkers, school students, hikers, to physically travel those places, to discover the truth of their own roots and the differences present elsewhere, in the "links" of the large network.

The Transhumance Trails connects two different territories by crossing others.
The shepherd who travels it is the messenger who learns and spreads culture and knowledge, but the main subject remains the territory, a precious treasure chest containing the richness of its history and the people who inhabit it, in a complex ensemble of ingredients that the Romans called Genius Loci. This potent energy represents the deep soul and the most important resource that permeates and influences the customs of the inhabitants and shapes the landscape. The Way thus becomes a compendium, a great work of culture and science, which narrates a cultural universe, describes significant diversities distilled over the centuries, but which lead to a unique discovery: that of humankind's ability to find a balance with the territory in which it lives, developing specific cultivation methods, creating appropriate products and tools, in a perfect dialogue with nature and the diverse passing of time in that precise place.

Saint Michel Way is a real route transferred into a digital experience (and vice versa) that determines the genesis of a thematic museum that inhabits no single place and yet inhabits all places, because no architectural structure could physically house such a vastness of narrative elements. The objective is, in fact, to create a living, dynamic, and continuously expanding Virtual Museum on the Rural History of Europe and its Territories, Material and Intangible Heritage that continues to regenerate itself, with multiple centuries-old traces that dialogue with the mutations of the present. Starting from this narration, from this tourist-cultural approach, can allow for its preservation, in addition to its sharing.

The final definition of the route, which will be presented to the Council of Europe for recognition, is emerging directly from the territory, starting from its particular orography and the traces of the past that are found in the present. To define it in detail, the contribution of travelers, scholars, historians, religious figures, athletes, shepherds, university students, philosophers, anthropologists, but above all passionate and proud people of the territory in which they live, of their own customs and traditions, is required. We ask everyone to contribute to the elaboration of a route that connects the national territories with the Sacred Line, and to define the connections between the main itinerary and the secondary routes, the places of veneration of Saint Michael and those of rural culture. The regions that will participate will be connected to each other through land and river routes of worship, pastoralism and then commerce, as well as those of tourism and culture. A digital space for each project that will be launched will be made available on the portal already dedicated to the project www.stmichaelway.eu


The Way, with the complexity of its itineraries, is the narrator that fascinates us with an extraordinary journey through space and time, amidst similarities in diversity, between what unites and what distinguishes, within a context of substantial cultural identity.
Digital support will allow everyone, near and far, to see a varied world in which human ingenuity elaborates diverse languages and forms to adapt, depicting, through the stratification of centuries, the great fresco of the peasant, rural, and pastoral history of Europe and its diverse territories, with the aim of transmitting to wayfarers, pilgrims, and travelers knowledge and respect for tradition, and to stimulate in them a love for the surrounding territory, with which to renew the sacred pact of respect, cultural resilience, and sustainability.