Pilgrimage routes, staying in monasteries, religious festivals, visits to prominent churches… If someone have a look at the official websites of the Tourist Offices in Germany and Italy find an interesting innovation in the supply of visits to certain cities in these countries: religious tourism. Appear to have discovered a great potential in this type of traveler who seeks the roots of their beliefs in combination with history and art, knowing and walking routes churches that once held the protagonists of spiritual becoming, whether Catholic saints, figures of Protestantism or events experienced by Jewish communities.
The web Germanic, for example, advertises temples and monasteries national including Cologne Cathedral, which is not only the 2 nd Gothic temple largest in the world after Seville, surviving battered the Second World War, but has been classified by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site. Or a revisitation of the route followed by Luther in the days when those territories traveled preaching the Reformation from his native (and obituary) Eiseben the famous Worms, to Magdeburg, Erfurt, Wittenberg, Heodelberg, Leipzig, Mansfeld… also offers the possibility to get a bit of Judaism that remains in the Teutonic country through their synagogues and bathrooms.
As for Italy, which dominated the Catholic world is obviously starting with the capital. If all roads lead to Rome, especially when it comes to religion, for that is the seat of Christianity and residence of the Pope, St. Peter’s Basilica and the Vatican Museums by itself to attract mass tourists but they can add other churches in the city as the Gesu, Santa Maria Maggiore and San Giovanni in Laterano.
But the tourist office also reports transalpina visits to landmarks such as Turin, where they keep the revered and controversial Shroud, Assisi (Perugia, Umbria), the hometown of San Francisco, in whose basilica you can see the splendid frescoes Giotto (the set is also Heritage Site), San Giovanni Rotondo, mountain village of the Apulia region in which Padre Pio worked, and so on.