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A stage on the Via Vallombrosa branch.
Once you manage to turn your back on the splendour of the Basilica of the Holy Cross, the largest Franciscan church in the world and the starting point of this stage, your route winds through streets lined with historic buildings and imbued with the Renaissance atmosphere of Florence. You will soon arrive at the riverside landscape of the Arno, surrounded by history and urban nature.
After crossing the river, the route continues along the left bank, passing through Florence's second-largest park, the Albereta. You will then head towards Rimaggio, a hamlet of Bagno a Ripoli, where the landscape soon becomes hilly and there is also a view of Brunelleschi's dome. You pass the primitive site, still in the Neo-Romanesque style, of the Church of St Stephen in Paterno. Inside, there is a fresco depicting the Virgin with the Angel, a work of the 15th-century Florentine school. Then you pass near the medieval Spedale del Bigallo, a historic building founded in 1214. Today, as then, it is dedicated to welcoming pilgrims and wayfarers.
Among lanes and paths that also follow roads first built in the medieval or Roman era, passing the small ridge of Monte Cucco, you reach Rignano sull'Arno. The town, of medieval origins, has several noteworthy historic and religious buildings, such as the thousand-year-old parish church of San Leolin.
