Annus fidei 2013 in Rome. An opportunity for pilgrimage tourism in Italy

Approximately 8,542,933 pilgrims have flocked to Rome in 2013 because of the Year of Faith proclaimed by Pope Benedict XVI to "rediscover the content of the faith professed, celebrated, lived and prayed". The Year of Faith has forced policy-makers and local authorities to a rethinking of strategies and models of pilgrimage tourism, typically unstructured and disorganized, in order to find new destinations, new itineraries and new tools to reach and guide pilgrims in search of new routes. For the first time Rome, the historical city of Christianity, where history is strongly connected to architectural and environmental heritages, has developed a hospitality plan to respond to the rising demand of contemporary pilgrim. Events and celebrations that have taken place during the year 2013, have called the attention of the Italian ecclesiastical authorities and of the civil society to the importance of touristic flows driven by religious motivations, so to redefine tendencies and geographic directions. The Annus fidei's hospitality model, which is based on a strong and innovative collaboration between Catholic and secular organization, is moreover characterized by a network structure that provides pilgrims with a wider offer of less known destinations for the spirit throughout the Italian peninsula. The aim of the present research is to examine the Annus fidei project characteristics, especially in its organizational and logistics aspects. At the same time, it aims to assess their effects on other Italian religious destinations in terms of development and growth of tourist flows and to evaluate a redistribution of growth opportunity in order to estimate a reduction of territorial disparities.