•  seeing the Mausoleum of Vladimir Lenin on the Red Square in Moscow, or 
•  visiting the birthplace of Elvis Presley. 

• The origins of its sanctity begin with the fourteen-year old girl Bernadette Soubirous.
• Between February and July of 1858, Bernadette saw apparitions of a white-robed lady 18 times in a small grotto called Massabiele, near the town of Lourdes.
• In the apparitions Bernadette was told to instruct the village priest to build a chapel in the grotto, which many people would soon come to visit.
• On the day of the 16th apparition, March 25, the lady revealed herself as the Blessed Virgin Mary. During her ecstatic trance in the grotto, Bernadette began to dig in the earth until a small puddle of water appeared. Over the next few days the puddle enlarged into a pool and eventually became the sacred spring for which Lourdes is now so famous.
• Initially only a regional pilgrimage destination, as incidents of healing began to be reported, the spring developed an international reputation for having therapeutic powers.
• From 1864 to 1872 the site was mostly a regional pilgrimage destination attracting approximately 30,000 persons per year. Initially the shrine was not known for its curative power but after 1873, when incidents of healing at the spring began to be reported, the shrine rapidly developed a national and then international reputation for having therapeutic powers.
• The increasing number of pilgrims eventually overcrowded the original church built above the grotto in 1876, and in 1958 an immense basilica was constructed. 

Lourdes

Nature and importance