The full visit lasts around 20 minutes, depending on the pace you choose. It can stretch to an hour for those who take the time to read the panels and to meditate in the relics room.
The visit is made up of two stages.
The 19th-century house
You enter the house preserved intact since the death of François Soubirous on 4 March 1871. On the ground floor, you discover the adjoining mill and the little kitchen, where Louise Soubirous died on 8 December 1866. Louise's bed still stands in its exact place, near the fireplace, along with the chair on which Bernadette fainted in the arms of her dying mother before her departure for Nevers in July 1866.
Upstairs, you climb the original staircase to reach François's bedroom. His solid wooden bed, his striped sheets and his period furniture have remained in place. In the same room, against the other wall, Bernadette's small bed bears witness to the times when she came back to see her parents, twice a week, from the hospice of the sisters of Nevers, about two hundred metres away.
The relics room
You then reach the room that brings together the authentic relics of Saint Bernadette, kept by our family since Jean-Marie, Bernadette's brother: the christening gown embroidered in Nevers for the birth of the first child of her brother Pierre (the last baptism with this gown took place in September 2024), handwritten letters addressed to her brother Jean-Marie, her personal missal, a small checked handkerchief, a grotto carved out of coal in memory of Massabielle, and several holy pictures made by her own hands.
