Bedevaartsoord Oostakker-Lourdes

About this audio guide

This guide to the Oostakker-Lourdes shrine on the edge of Ghent goes back to the eighteen seventies, to a baron turned hermit, a marquise with a taste for garden scenery, and a village priest with an idea. It follows how a private estate at Slotendries drew its first crowds, and the farm labourer from Jabbeke who arrived here one April morning with a leg that had troubled him for years. Best heard standing at the grotto, facing the rock face.