France: Lourdes - Massabielle Grotto

Pilgrims visit the Massabielle Grotto in Lourdes, France. Taken 2 July 2004. Several million Catholic pilgrims visit Lourdes each year. 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 Massabielle Grotto by the Gave River. Lourdes 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.