Lourdes - France

Patrick, a dear cousin of mine lives in Lourdes and has spent all of his career as a general practitioner in that town.  I went to Lourdes with one of my sons and his companion this year and caught up with Patrick, who jokingly states that if the healing water of Lourdes cannot cure an illness, he might just be the next alternative.

Lourdes is a small town lying in the foothills of the Pyrenees Mountains.  Prior to the mid-19th century, the town was best known for the Château fort de Lourdes, a fortified castle that rises up from a rocky escarpment.

Daniel's Food and Wine Tours  - Lourdes: View from Château fort de Lourdes



Daniel's Food and Wine Tours  - Lourdes: View from Castle

The castle's origins go back to Roman times.  Various remains from this era were brought to light by military engineering work in the 19th century.  The finds are exhibited on the site.  Today, the oldest remains date from the 11th and 12th centuries and consist of the foundations of the present fortifications.  The castle was reinforced in the 13th and 14th centuries, and again in the 17th and 18th centuries. 

Daniel's Food and Wine Tours  - Lourdes: Climbing to the Castle

Daniel's Food and Wine Tours  - Lourdes: Fountain and Basin in the Castle

Daniel's Food and Wine Tours  - Lourdes: Passageway in the Castle

Daniel's Food and Wine Tours  - Lourdes: The Castle view from the township

Up until 1858, Lourdes was a quiet, modest, county town with a population of only some 4,000 inhabitants when the events which took place there changed its history.  On 11 February 1858, a 14-year-old local girl, Bernadette Soubirous claimed that a beautiful lady appeared to her in the remote Grotto of Massabielle.  This lady later identified herself as "the Immaculate conception"   The lady appeared 18 times, and by 1859 thousands of pilgrims were visiting the sanctuary.

The statue of Our Lady of Lourdes was erected at the site in 1864.  Bernadette Soubirous was later canonised and the city became one of the world's most important sites of pilgrimage and religious tourism.  The 150thJubilee of the first apparition took place on 11 February 2008 with an outdoor Mass attended by approximately 45,000 pilgrims.  Yearly from March to October the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes is a place of mass pilgrimage from Europe and other parts of the world. The spring water from the grotto is believed by some to possess healing properties when one drinks it or bathes in it.


Daniel's Food and Wine Tours  - The Statue of the Immaculate Conception

At the time of the apparitions the grotto was on common land which was used by the villagers for pasturing animals, collecting firewood and as a garbage dump.  It possessed a reputation for being an unpleasant place.



An estimated 200 million people have visited the shrine since 1860 and the Roman Catholic Church has officially recognized 69 healings considered miraculous.  Cures are examined using Church criteria for authenticity with no physical or psychological basis other than the healing power of the water.

Daniel's Food and Wine Tours  - Lourdes: The Cathedral View from the Castle

Daniel's Food and Wine Tours  - Lourdes: The Cathedral Main Enterance

Today Lourdes has a population of around 15,000 and in the middle of winter, the town feels almost as if it were empty.  In summer however, it hosts around five million visitors every year from all corners of the world.  This constant stream of pilgrims and tourists transformed quiet Lourdes into the second most important centre of tourism in France, after Paris, and the third most important site of international Catholic pilgrimage after Rome and the Holy Land.

Daniel's Food and Wine Tours  - Lourdes: An Empty Street in Lourdes in Winter

For 46 years, up until 778, Lourdes was possessed by Muslims of Al-Andalous.   Little is known of Lourdes in the period from the barbarian invasions to the Carolingian period, when the town was part of the County of Bigorre.  After the residency of the Bigorre counts, the French lost the town to the English, in 1360, bringing a temporary peace to France during the course of the Hundred Years War.  The English were able to take advantage of the excellent strategic situation and the prosperity of a market that was born in the eleventh century, increasingly consolidated by its proximity and good communications with Toulouse and Spain.  In 1405, Charles VI, laid siege to the castle and eventually captured the town from the English following an 18-month siege.  In 1607, Lourdes finally became part of the Kingdom of France. 

Daniel's Food and Wine Tours  - Lourdes: Carved Stone in the Castle

The castle became a jail under Louis XV but, in 1789, the General Estates Assembly ordered the liberation of the prisoners.  Following the rise of Napoleon in 1803, he again made the Castle an Estate jail.  Towards the end of the Peninsular War between France, Spain, Portugal, and Britain in 1814, British and Allied forces, under the Duke of Wellington entered France and took control of the region.  They defeated the French near the adjoining town of Tarbes before the final battle outside Toulouse on 10 April 1814 that brought the war to an end. 

Daniel's Food and Wine Tours  - Lourdes: Narrow view of Lourdes from the Castle

Daniel's Food and Wine Tours  - Lourdes: Internal stairs in the Castle

We only stayed in Lourdes for two short days but everyone enjoyed the town as well as my cousin’s welcome, his hospitality and his love of food and wine.  I will return there soon.