Lourdes

The rock in the middle of Lourdes was an oppidum in Roman times, and remains of walls and a temple to water gods have been found on the site of the present fortress. Legend says the Muslim leader Mirat, besieged by Charlemagne, gave in after an eagle dropped a trout at his feet, and took the baptismal name Lorus, which became the town's name. In the Middle Ages the castle belonged to the counts of Bigorre, and a market made the town prosperous; the English held it from 1360 to 1407, until Charles VI took it after an 18-month siege. Lourdes became part of the kingdom of France in 1607, and its castle served as a state prison.

Until 1858 it was a quiet town of about 4,000, with a garrison and travellers passing through to the spas of Barèges and Cauterets. On 11 February that year Bernadette Soubirous, the 14-year-old daughter of a miller whose family had fallen into poverty, said a lady had appeared to her in the grotto of Massabielle; the lady appeared 18 times and called herself the Immaculate Conception. A spring rose where Bernadette dug, and by 1859 thousands of pilgrims were arriving.

The basilicas followed, and Lourdes became one of the world's leading Marian shrines. Pope John Paul II visited twice, in 1983 and 2004. The town has been declared a natural disaster zone for floods and mudslides many times, most recently in 2021 and 2022.

Pilgrimage is the town's culture. From Easter to All Saints' Day the sanctuary runs Masses in many languages, the daily Blessed Sacrament procession led by sick pilgrims, and the evening torchlight procession with candles and the Lourdes Ave Maria. The Catholic Church has recognised 72 healings as miraculous as of April 2025, examined through the Lourdes Medical Bureau, and volunteers from many countries come to help sick and disabled pilgrims.

The story has been retold many times: Émile Zola's novel Lourdes, the 1943 film The Song of Bernadette, which won four Academy Awards, and more recent documentaries and films such as The Miracle Club. Bernadette spoke Occitan, the old language of the region, and her family's houses in town are now museums.

Beyond the shrine, Lourdes is a Pyrenean town with its own loyalties. FC Lourdes was one of the great French rugby clubs of the mid-20th century, winning the national championship eight times, and its most famous player, Jean Prat, played 51 times for France. Since 2015 the town's mountain-bike course has hosted a round of the UCI Downhill World Cup.

About 13,000 people lived in the commune in 2023, yet Lourdes has around 144 hotels and some 22,000 beds — the second-largest hotel stock in France after Paris. The sanctuary receives around four million visitors a year, and pilgrimage tourism shapes nearly every job, from hotels and restaurants to the shops selling candles, rosaries and containers for Lourdes water.

The town is divided in two. The lower town around the sanctuary is busy, international and seasonal, with hotels that close in winter; the upper town, around the Place du Champ-Commun and its market hall, keeps the rhythm of an ordinary French country town, with schools, the médiathèque and everyday shops.

The year follows the pilgrimage calendar. In season, trains and coaches bring large organised groups, including the sick and their helpers, and the streets fill with many languages; in winter the crowds thin and life slows. The river and the mountains bring risks too, with repeated floods along the Gave de Pau.

Lourdes eats the food of the Pyrenean foothills. Garbure, the hearty soup-stew of the Béarn and the Pyrenees, is a one-pot dish of mainly root vegetables slowly cooked with meat in an earthenware pot, the cooking liquid sometimes served first as a soup. The Tarbais bean, grown mainly in the Hautes-Pyrénées, is a protected local variety with a Label Rouge and a PGI.

Most restaurants are geared to pilgrims, particularly along Rue de la Grotte and the streets near the sanctuary, offering set menus, pizzerias and simple French cooking, often with menus in several languages. Shops close for a long lunch, and on Sundays only a few stay open.

For everyday food, residents shop at the covered market in the Halles on the Place du Champ-Commun, under the 19th-century iron-and-glass roof, and in the bakeries and grocers of the upper town. A local market also sells fresh produce and French snacks, a useful alternative to the set menus of the pilgrim streets.