Basilique Notre-Dame de la Couture

Bernay

According to tradition, a sheep unearthed a statuette of the Virgin in a hamlet called La Couture — "the cultivated land" in Old French — at the gates of Bernay. The discovery, held to be miraculous, gave rise to a pilgrimage and the building of a chapel, raised to a church in the 13th century, rebuilt in the 14th and 15th centuries and enlarged in the 16th. For centuries, Notre-Dame de la Couture has remained the traditional place of pilgrimage of the diocese's confréries de charité, those Norman brotherhoods that gather here every year at Pentecost, banners at their head. On the recommendation of Angelo Roncalli, apostolic nuncio and future Pope John XXIII, Pope Pius XII raised the church to the rank of minor basilica in 1950: it is still today the only basilica in the diocese of Évreux, which covers the whole département of the Eure. The building also houses an organ built in 1880 by the Rouen organ-builder Hubert Krischer, with 21 stops, restored in 2007 by Denis Lacorre. A living Marian shrine, the basilica thus brings together pastoral legend, popular devotion and seven centuries of Norman religious architecture.

Getting there : Couture district, 27300 Bernay; information from the Bernay Terres de Normandie tourist office; annual gathering of the confréries de charité (charitable brotherhoods) at Pentecost.

Opening times and access details are given as a guide only: check before you set out.

Ambient sound