About Lourdes Grottos

This is a Lourdes grotto replica, one built in Chicago in 1909.

What is a Lourdes grotto?

A Lourdes grotto replica is a shrine in the form of a rocky structure or cave, inspired by the Massabielle cave near the town of Lourdes, France. In 1858, a young peasant girl named Bernadette Soubirous saw a series of visions of the Virgin Mary at that cave. The cave and the town have become a major pilgrimage site for Catholic faithful, at which many miraculous healings of the sick have occurred in the spring water that began to flow in the cave after Bernadette’s discovery. Around five million people visit Lourdes every year.

A 1958 postcard published for the centenary of both the visions and the establishment of the holy site at Lourdes in France. Bernadette Soubirous is pictured at center; along with the original cave of Massabielle where the visions took place (top right), and pictures of two of the three large cathedrals that have been constructed above the cave. To the lower right of Bernadette is an illustration of her visions, with Bernadette kneeling next to the cave and the Virgin Mary appearing in a rocky niche above, revealing to Bernadette that she is the Immaculate Conception. This is the scene that is re-created in Lourdes grotto replicas.
Millions of pilgrims visit Lourdes every year, and countless postcards, prayer cards, books, and even an Academy Award-winning Hollywood movie have been made about this holy place.

Lourdes grotto replicas have been built at numerous Catholic institutions around the world: churches, schools, universities, seminaries, convents, monasteries, orphanages, cemeteries, retreat houses and pilgrimage sites. Many were built in Europe, particularly France, Germany, Belgium, and Ireland, and others are found on every continent due to missionary activity.

Thousands of Lourdes grottos were built in the United States and Canada (but only a few in Mexico, as most Mexican Catholics prefer shrines to their native Our Lady of Guadalupe). Lourdes grotto replicas were built as early as the 1870s and particularly from around 1900 through the mid-1950s, peaking in the 1930s. New grottos are still constructed today and may be enjoying a resurgence after their nadir in the 1960s through the 1980s.

Lourdes grottos were built in every state and province. They are found most frequently in New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, California and Quebec. In the US, they were often built by German Catholic immigrants.

Lourdes grottos are most often named a Grotto of Our Lady of Lourdes. Shrine of Our Lady of Lourdes is more common in the eastern United States. Other names include Lourdes Grotto, Grotto of Lourdes, Shrine of Lourdes, and the less-specific Grotto of Our Lady (see definitions below).

Lourdes grotto replicas have been built at thousands of Catholic institutions, in a variety of styles. Some of them have been the site of large pilgrimages, and others are quiet spots for individual prayer. Most of them are lovely, peaceful places that are visited and enjoyed by the faithful.

Lourdes Grotto Features

Lourdes grotto replicas often contain the following features:

  • Most of them were built as outdoor garden spaces, but some, mostly earlier, grottos were built inside churches
  • They are sometimes built to resemble a natural cave, but more often are built of stacked rocks, particularly porous rocks
  • They usually contain a niche, often at upper right, which contains a statue of the Virgin Mary
  • The statue usually shows Mary’s hands clasped in prayer and looking upward, not hands spread downward, nor holding the infant Jesus
  • They usually include a larger cave opening at ground level, which can contain an altar for religious services. Sometimes if the grotto has only one cave-like opening and no upper niche on the exterior for a Mary statue, the cave will contain the statues of Mary and Bernadette, sheltering both from the weather (like the one below)
  • There is often a statue of Bernadette kneeling, usually at lower left. The oldest Lourdes grotto replicas mostly did not include a Bernadette statue when they were built, because the original cave in France does not have one. But these became common after the turn of the 20th century, and were frequently added later to older grottos.
  • Sometimes a water feature is included, with water flowing into a pool. If water flowed directly down the rocks, this sometimes caused damage over time to the structure, and was often shut off later to preserve the grotto.
  • Benches and/or kneeling benches are often included to enable religious services and private devotions
This grotto has only one cave-like opening in which both statues were placed, rather than an exterior niche for the Mary statue like in the first image on this page

There are many grottos and shrines of Our Lady that are not specifically Lourdes grottos (shrines of other Marian apparitions, such as of Our Lady of Fatima, Our Lady of Guadalupe, Our Lady of Knock, etc.). Sometimes it is not clear if a grotto was intended to be a Lourdes grotto, but I include a grotto in my research if its builders called it a Lourdes grotto, if a Bernadette statue is included, or if it has an Our Lady of Lourdes statue (hands clasped in prayer and looking upward). I occasionally include grottos with exceptionally beautiful rockwork or design, even if it’s not clear that it was intended to be a Lourdes grotto (just because it’s beautiful).

I have discovered nearly 2,000 Lourdes grottos in the US, and I will continue to search for them. Many of them have been pictured in postcards–I have close to 500 Lourdes grotto postcards–and I find new grottos nearly every time I search for them. But despite these aggregate numbers, each grotto was/is uniquely beautiful, and was meaningful to the people who visited and prayed there.

These lovely grottos should be documented, so that those who remember them can see them again–and so that they can be studied by people who want to build new grottos at Catholic institutions.