Tourist information -
Lourdes
Lourdes, about 30km southeast of Pau, has just
one function. Over seven million Catholic pilgrims arrive here each
year, and the town is totally given over to looking after and exploiting
them. Lourdes was hardly more than a village before 1858, when Bernadette
Soubirous, the 14-year-old daughter of an ex-miller, had the first
of eighteen visions of the Virgin Mary in the so-called Grotte de
Massabielle by the Gave de Pau. Since then, Lourdes has grown a
great deal, and it is now one of the biggest attractions in this
part of France, many of its visitors hoping for a miraculous cure
for conventionally intractable ailments.
The first large-scale pilgrimage took place in 1873, organized
by a reactionary Catholic movement called the Assomptionistes ,
whose avowed purpose was to stem the advancing tide of republicanism
and rationalism. They took over the management of Lourdes, shoving
aside the local priest who had wanted to organize the pilgrimages
himself. Adroit propagandists and agitators, they sought to promote
their cause by publishing a cheap mass-circulation paper called
La Croix , aimed at the poor and uneducated, and by organizing these
massive pilgrimages.
Practically every shop is given over to the sale of indescribable
religious kitsch: Bernadette in every shape and size, adorning barometers,
thermometers, plastic tree trunks, key rings, empty bottles that
you can fill with holy Lourdes water, bellows, candles, sweets and
illuminated plastic grottoes. There's even a waxworks museum, the
Musée Grévin , at 87 rue de la Grotte (daily: April-Oct
9-11.30am & 1.30-6.30pm; July & Aug also 8.30-10pm; 33F/?5),
with over a hundred lifesize figures illustrating the lives of Bernadette
and Christ. Clustered around the miraculous grotto are the churches
of the Cité Réligieuse , an annexe to the town proper
that sprang up last century. The first to be built was the flamboyant
Basilique du Rosaire et de l'Immaculée Conception (1871-1883),
swiftly followed by the massive subterranean Basilique St-Pie-X
, which claims to be able to house 20,000 people at a time. The
Grotte de Massabielle itself, where Bernadette had her visions,
is the focus of the pilgrimages - a moisture-blackened overhang
by the riverside with a statue of the Virgin in waxwork white and
baby blue.
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