Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes
In 1858 the Virgin Mary appeared eighteen times to fourteen-year-old Bernadette Soubirous in the grotto of Massabielle, beside the river Gave at the foot of the Pyrenees. “I am the Immaculate Conception,” she said. At her word Bernadette dug in the ground and uncovered a spring. Pilgrims have drunk and bathed in its water ever since, and the Church has recognized some seventy miraculous healings there, with thousands more reported.
Above the grotto stands the Gothic Basilica of the Immaculate Conception, finished in 1872. Below it is the Basilica of Our Lady of the Rosary, finished in 1889, whose ramps curve out like open arms around the esplanade and whose domed interior is covered with mosaics of the mysteries of the Rosary. The great underground Basilica of Saint Pius X, built in 1958, holds some 25,000 people.
Several million pilgrims come each year, among them many thousands of the sick, cared for by volunteers. Every evening the candlelight Marian procession winds through the sanctuary singing the Ave Maria of Lourdes.
- Built
- 1862–1958
- Style
- Gothic Revival; Romano-Byzantine; modern
- Where
- Lourdes, France
- Map
- Find it on OpenStreetMap
- Read about
- Saint Bernadette of Lourdes