Lourdes tourist information
Lourdes France
In the heart of the Pyrenees, Lourdes receives 5 million visitors from all over the world every year. Spirituality, whether belonging to history or legends, is part of the present through the depth and beauty of the sight, the marks of the past, the serenity of the Sanctuaries. Lourdes was just a small market town on the 11 February, when Bernadette Soubirous met, along the Gave, the “Lady” that made the town a Marian city. Today Lourdes has the second greatest number of hotels in France with 270 establishments. Its geographical position, at the foot of the mountains makes it an ideal starting-point of excursions to the Pyrenees.
Lourdes is situated in the Southwest of the Hautes-Pyrénées department, in a verdant basin, leaning on the first Pyrenean foothills. It has 15,043 inhabitants. At an altitude of 420m, Lourdes is a central point around which radiate the valleys of Batsurguère, Castelloubon, Arcizac, Pau and Tarbes, towards the plain. In the south some crest of famous Pyrenean peaks stand out: Montaigu, Aneto, Vignemale (3,298m), and against the city, there are three summits reaching between 800 and 1,000m, the Béout, the Petit Jer with its three crosses and the Grand Jer with its huge cross watching over the town. Lourdes’ urban area is crossed in a south-north direction by the Gave coming from Gavarnie, into which flow several torrents from Barèges and Cauterets. The Gave then branches off to the west towards the Béarn, rippling past the banks of the Massabielle grotto. The Fortified Castle rises at the middle of the city, leaning on the escarpment.
It is certain that this part of Bigorre was inhabited very early on, as demonstrate the flint axes, the cut stones and the bones that were found in the “Espélugues” grottoes. (Pyrenean Museum of Lourdes’ Fortified Castle.) The Gauls, the Romans, the Barbarians and the Moors successively fortified Lourdes’ rock on which the castle stands. A legend goes with this antique fortress. In 778, Charlemagne, leading his army, lay siege to the Fortified Castle which was occupied by the Saracen Mirat and his Moors. Despite the assaults of the Francs and famine, the Castle of Lourdes stayed impregnable. But suddenly an eagle appeared in the horizon. The eagle flew over the castle and dropped from its mouth, at the feet of Mirat, an enormous trout. The Moor cleverly took the fish and presented Charlemagne with it in order to let him believe that he still had some food. Charlemagne was about to raise the siege when Turpin, bishop of Puy-en-Velay and companion of Charlemagne, had an inspiration and managed to obtain the right to go and speak to the besieged. He suggested to Mirat that he surrendered, not to the sovereign but to the Queen of the sky. The Moor leader liked the idea and he went to place his arms at the feet of the Black Virgin of Puy, and got baptised. On the day of his baptism, Mirat took on the name of Lorus, which was then given to the town and later became Lourdes. At the beginning of the 1850s, just before the apparitions, Lourdes was a modest county-town with 4,135 inhabitants. The castle was occupied by an infantry garrison. The town was only a stopping place for those in search of the waters at Barèges, Cauterets, Luz-Saint-Sauveur and Bagnères-de-Bigorre, and for the first mountaineers on their way to Gavarnie, when the event which was to change its history took place.
Lourdes, in the 19th century, was one of the main places in the district with more than 4,000 inhabitants and situated on the banks of the river Gave de Pau. Mills were plentiful ; many were dotted around outside the town. In one of these, the Boly Mill, François and Louise Soubirous lived happily for 10 years together with their 4 children… The eldest was christened Marie-Bernadette but called Bernadette (born 7th January 1844). In 1854 the Soubirous family were reduced to extreme poverty as a result of an accident at work blinded François in one eye, he was falsely accused of having stolen two sacks of flour and the bankruptcy of the mill. Finally, 38 died of cholera in Lourdes. Bernadette was stricken by cholera and tuberculoses. She was to suffer the consequences throughout the rest of her life. The family had to leave the mill and in 1857 had taken refuge in a disused prison cell of 16 m2 called “the Cachot”. At 14 years of age, unable to read or write, not having made her First Communion, Bernadette, bruised by all these events, was to have an extraordinary experience.
On 11th. February 1858, Bernadette, her sister Toinette and a friend, Jeanne Abadie, went looking for firewood in the cave called Massabielle, beside the River Gave. While Toinette and Jeanne gathered wood, Bernadette heard a sound like a gust of wind. “Lifting her head, she saw, in the crevice of the rock, a young girl, surrounded by light, who looked at her and smiled.”
That was the first apparition, 17 others were to follow. On 4th July 1866, Bernadette left Lourdes for Nevers where she entered, as a nun, the Convent of St. Gildard. She died there on 16th April 1879, where her body still lies.
