Lourdes

In 1858 Bernadette Soubirous, a fourteen-year-old miller's daughter, said she saw a lady at the grotto of Massabielle eighteen times; the church accepted the apparitions in 1862 and building followed. The sanctuary now covers about fifty-two hectares with three churches stacked on the rock above the grotto, an underground basilica holding twenty-five thousand people, and baths fed by the spring. Around three to six million people come each year, many of them seriously ill or disabled, and the town is organised around that: the torchlight procession crosses the esplanade each evening in season. It is one of the most visited Catholic sites in the world.

History

The area was inhabited in prehistoric times, and from the first century BC a Roman oppidum stood where the fortress is now, as finds made when the parish church of Saint-Pierre was pulled down in the early 20th century showed: walls, a temple to the gods of water and three votive altars, replaced in the fifth century by an early church. From 732 to 778 Lourdes was held by Muslims of al-Andalus, and legend says their leader Mirat, besieged by Charlemagne, surrendered after an eagle dropped a trout at his feet and was baptised Lorus, which gave the town its name. Part of the County of Bigorre, the fortress was fought over in the Albigensian Crusade, and in the Hundred Years' War the English held it from 1360 to 1407, until Charles VI took it after an 18-month siege; the town grew from 150 hearths in the 13th century to 243 by the early 15th. In 1858 the visions of Bernadette Soubirous made Lourdes one of the world's great places of pilgrimage (Wikipedia, Lourdes).

What to look for

• The grotto - the rock hollow of the 1858 apparitions with the spring.
• The stacked basilicas - three churches built one above the other on the rock.
• The underground basilica - a concrete hall for twenty-five thousand.
• The torchlight procession - a nightly candlelit crossing of the esplanade.

When to go

April to October, when the sanctuary is fully open and processions run; major feast days in August are extremely crowded. Winter is quiet and many hotels close.

Good to know

This is an active place of worship where many visitors are gravely ill, and casual sightseeing behaviour is out of place. The town outside the sanctuary is dense with souvenir shops. Baths require queuing for hours.

Nearby

The Col du Tourmalet lies east; the Pyrenees rise south.