Sigeric on his return from Rome to Canterbury between 990 and 994. Once in Pontremoli and having to cross the Apennines, Sigeric chose the route of the Cisa pass (Monte Bardone), which allowed him to reach, by drawing a wide arc, the cities of the plain (Fidenza, Piacenza, Pavia). However, there was also another, older route, now called Via degli Abati, which passed through the mountains and was already used since the seventh century, especially by those traveling on foot, as the shortest route from Pavia to Lucca and to Rome. The Route, already used by the Lombard sovereigns before the conquest of the Cisa controlled by the Byzantines, also touched the abbey of Bobbio, in the heart of the Apennines, where pilgrims on their way to Rome and coming from France and the British Isles passed to venerate the remains of St. Columbanus, the great Irish abbot father, with St. Benedict, of European monasticism. For this reason, already in the Lombard age along the route, as well as in Pavia, Piacenza and Lucca, there were “hospitali” of Saint Columban.
The route was also followed by the abbots of Bobbio to go to Rome to the pope, on whom the abbey directly depended, and also to keep in touch with the royal court of Pavia, on which its goods depended. Regarding the connection with Pavia, Paul the Deacon, the historian of the Lombards, in his “Historia Langobardorum” indicated the distance between Bobbio and Pavia as 40 miles (equal to about 60 kilometers), thus identifying the usual route between the two locations, without any reference to the subsequent translation of the body of St. Columbanus from Bobbio to Pavia (see Via Columbani or the translation). The route, passing through Broni, Canneto, Canevino. Pometo, Caminata and other historic locations, constitutes the Pavia stretch of the Abbots Way; road that connects Pavia through Bobbio with Pontremoli represents as a whole the Apennine Variant of the Via Francigena.