Imagine you’re travelling today and, instead of posting stories, you write a long letter to your friends telling them everything: the road, what you eat, who you meet, what surprises you, what moves you… Well, that’s exactly what Egeria did hundreds of years ago, at the dawn of the Middle Ages. Egeria (also cited in sources as Etheria or Aetheria) was a Christian woman of the Roman Empire who wrote an account of her pilgrimage to the Holy Land in the 4th century. Her text is known as the Itinerarium Egeriae or Peregrinatio and, although it has reached us incomplete, it is a gem: written in the first person, with the eyes of a real traveller—one who looks, asks, and takes notes.
And where was she from? Here comes the first “heads up”: we can’t say it with 100% certainty. She is often presented as Hispano-Roman, and some scholars have defended an origin in ancient Gallaecia (northwest of the Iberian Peninsula), but there is academic debate regarding her identity and provenance. What is clear is that her account is one of the oldest and most valuable testimonies of a Christian woman describing her journey in detail. And here’s a beautiful detail: the text seems to be addressed to a group of women “back home,” a kind of circle of friends or spiritual companions, whom Egeria addresses with affectionate formulas typical of the time. In other words: she travelled… but she wrote in order to share.
Egeria wrote her account during her journey
A huge journey in sandals: what she travelled (and how a pilgrim moved around)
When we read the word “pilgrimage” today, we think of backpacks, boots, and stamps. Egeria, however, travelled in a world without Google Maps, without online reservations, and without “send me your location.” And yet she embarked on a gigantic adventure. Her route (according to what survives in the text) passes through places that today sound like a history book and, at the same time, like an epic film: Mount Sinai, Jerusalem, Mount Nebo, the Sea of Galilee area… she even mentions stops in what is now Syria and Turkey.
And it wasn’t a quick “there and back.” Egeria spent around three years in Jerusalem, using the city as a base to make excursions to different holy places. And how did one travel back then? With a lot of human logistics: Roman roads, escorts in certain areas, hospices, Christian communities that welcomed pilgrims… and, above all, patience. A lot of patience. The kind of patience that makes you think: “Well… if she could cross half the world with basically nothing, I can climb that hill on the Camino without drama.”
Here another very “travelling mindset” idea fits perfectly: sometimes the journey isn’t defined so much by the “where” as by the “with whom,” because companions completely change the experience. Egeria, in her writing, makes it clear that she doesn’t travel like a robot: she talks, asks questions, marvels, and relies on people. A journey is a map… but it is also a collection of encounters.
Egeria often visited hermits and anchorites
The “diary” that isn’t a diary: what she wrote and why it’s so captivating
Although it is often called a “diary,” what Egeria wrote is more like a travel chronicle in the form of a letter, told from the inside. And that’s what makes it feel so modern: it doesn’t read like a cold document, but like someone telling you, “You won’t believe what I saw today!”
In the first preserved section (the “route” part), Egeria describes journeys and visits to places she identifies with biblical stories. It’s not just “here’s a mountain”: it’s “this is where this happened,” “this is where that is remembered,” “this is the tradition they told us.” And then comes one of the most famous and valuable parts: her descriptions of the liturgy in Jerusalem, especially celebrations such as Holy Week and Easter. Why is this important? Because she shows us how these ceremonies were lived in the 4th century, with details about schedules, processions, chants, and customs. It’s like finding an ancient video… but written.
What’s fun is that, even though Egeria talks about religious matters, she does so with a very “traveller’s eye”: she observes how the city works, how people organise themselves, what everyone does at each moment. She’s not writing a thesis: she’s describing an experience. And for historians, that is pure gold. One of the ingredients that makes a story travel well (on paper or on a screen) is the ability to remember why you are telling it, what moved you to begin. Egeria seems to write from exactly that place: the emotion of living something she wants to share.
Egeria walking escorted by Roman soldiers, suggesting she may have been a woman of high social status
How her story survived: the lost manuscript, the discovery, and the “Eureka!” moment
Egeria wrote in the 4th century, but her text did not reach us as an original kept neatly in a decorated box. Nothing like that. What survives of the Itinerarium comes thanks to a medieval copy: the so-called Codex Aretinus, an 11th-century manuscript (copied in the environment of Monte Cassino, according to scholarly tradition).
In 1884, an Italian scholar named Gian Francesco Gamurrini found this codex in a library in Arezzo (Italy). Meaning that for centuries the text was there, quietly waiting to be recognised. Is it complete? No. The beginning and the end are missing, and there are gaps in several parts. But even so, what remains is enough to understand Egeria’s voice and the scale of her journey.
And what about her name? Also interesting: since the surviving manuscript didn’t come with a clear “Hello, I’m Egeria” cover page, there was confusion for a while. Part of the identification was linked to a later letter (attributed to Valerius of Bierzo) that mentions a pilgrim woman, which is why different names appear in different manuscripts. As a result, today we speak of Egeria, Etheria, or Aetheria… most likely referring to the same person.
Why Egeria’s journey is a historical milestone
Egeria’s journey is not just an ancient adventure: it is a true historical milestone. Her account, the Itinerarium Egeriae, is one of the oldest travel testimonies we preserve written by a person from Hispania, and moreover by a woman. This makes it extraordinarily rare and valuable: a female voice from the 4th century telling first-hand what she sees, lives, and feels as she moves through the world.
Egeria gives us something very intimate: the point of view of a real traveller. She describes roads, stages, stops, local traditions, and religious celebrations with a level of detail that today allows us to glimpse what pilgrimage was like in the late Roman Empire. Thanks to her, we know how people travelled, how pilgrimages were organised, and how the great sacred places of the time were experienced.
Egeria clearly describes the Christian liturgy of her time in the places she visited
And here comes a fun fact to put things into perspective: although today we associate the word “pilgrimage” with the Camino de Santiago, Egeria did not walk the Camino… simply because it did not exist yet! Her pilgrimage went to the Holy Land and other sacred places of the Christian East. In fact, nearly 500 years would pass before the Camino de Santiago as we know it was born, beginning the great Jacobean story in Galicia.
This is why Egeria is so important: because centuries before Compostela existed as a pilgrim destination, she left us living proof that people were already walking with purpose, travelling in search of something beyond a place. And the best part is that someone had the brilliant idea to write it down—a true milestone in travel literature. Thanks to her, today we don’t just imagine what that world was like: we see it through the eyes of a traveller.
There are people who walk to reach a place. And there are people who walk to tell the story. Egeria did both. And fortunately, we can still read her today (even if only in fragments) and smile, thinking: the first great female traveller didn’t need filters. Just eyes, footsteps… and the desire to share everything with her friends.
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