Lourdes Hotels

Lourdes is a large town in the French Pyrenees. It is a global centre of Marian pilgrimage, receiving hundreds of thousands of visitors each year. Roman Catholics believe that Mary, the Mother of God, appeared 18 times at the Grotto to a young girl, Bernadette Soubirous. Originally a sleepy market town on the road to the spas of the Pyrenees, Lourdes has grown into the largest Marian pilgrimage centre in the world. The town has two sections: the international portion by the river, consisting of the spiritual area containing the Grotto and churches (known as the Domaine or the Sanctuaries), and the "French" portion, centered around the Marketplace & Hotel de Ville. Lourdes, 43km southeast of Pau, was just a sleepy market town until 1858, when Bernadette Soubirous (1844–79), a near-illiterate, 14-year-old peasant girl, saw the Virgin Mary in a series of 18 visions that came to her in a grotto. After long deliberation, the Vatican confirmed them as bona fide apparitions and the little country girl, having lived out her short life as a nun, was declared Ste Bernadette in 1933. Nowadays Lourdes is one of the world's most important pilgrimage sites, descended upon annually by some five million visitors from all over the world. Well over half are pilgrims, including many invalids seeking cures. Nowadays, 58% of pilgrims come from beyond France's frontiers – and two-thirds are over 45 years old.