Musée Grévin de Lourdes (Wax Museum)

Using dozens of wax figures and dramatic tableaux, the museum retells the 1858 apparitions at Lourdes and the life of Saint Bernadette, providing historical and spiritual context for pilgrims visiting the shrine.

Planning your visit

In 1858 a fourteen-year-old girl named Bernadette Soubirous, from a family living in a former jail in Lourdes, reported eighteen apparitions of a woman at the Massabielle grotto. The Church investigated, eventually accepted the apparitions, and Lourdes became one of the largest pilgrimage sites in the world, receiving millions of visitors annually, many of them sick or disabled.

The wax museum retells that story through dozens of tableaux with life-size figures: Bernadette's family circumstances, the apparitions, the official interrogations she faced, her later life as a nun at Nevers and her death at 35. Additional scenes cover the life of Christ.

For pilgrims it supplies the narrative context the shrine itself assumes; for other visitors it is a period piece of religious display, sincere and old-fashioned. The presentation is dated in style, which some find charming and others do not.

Bookable options include entry tickets and formats combining the museum with audio-guided spiritual itineraries around the sanctuary. Current availability is listed below.