Where the Martin family became a family
Catholic Alençon is a rare thing: a pilgrimage whose sacred geography is domestic and marital rather than monastic or martyrial. The house, the parish church, the bridge, the workshop and the river hold the marriage and the household from which Saint Thérèse came.
A marriage, mapped
Catholic pilgrimage is usually built around the extraordinary: a tomb, a relic, an apparition, a monastery. Alençon is built around a marriage. It is where two people who had each been refused religious life discovered that the life they were given instead was the one that would make them saints, and where their nine children were born, baptized, raised, and in four cases buried. Everything Lisieux is famous for begins here, but the reason to come is not that Thérèse was born in this town. It is that Louis and Zélie were canonized in it, in the ordinary sense that they became holy here, doing the work of a household. There is no other pilgrimage city in Europe where the central building is a family home.
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River, church, and street
River, church, and street
Alençon is small and the Martin geography is smaller. The Sarthe runs along the western edge of the old town, and it is on a bridge over it that Louis and Zélie met. The basilica stands in the middle, on the Place de la Magdeleine. The family house is about eight minutes north-east of the basilica, on rue Saint-Blaise. The workshop years, from 1858 to 1871, were spent by the Pont-Neuf, on the river side; the household years, from 1871, on rue Saint-Blaise. Everything a pilgrim needs is inside a fifteen-minute walk, and the walk itself is the chronology.
The western edge of the old town, where the Sarthe runs past the mills and the bridges. Louis's watch shop and the family's first home were here, by the Pont-Neuf, from 1858 to 1871, and the Pavillon he bought in 1857 stands on the bank.
On the ground Five to ten minutes from the basilica, downhill toward the water. Le Pavillon and Saint-Pierre de Montsort are on this side of town and are shown by arrangement with the sanctuary rather than on fixed hours.
The center of the old town around the basilica, pedestrianised and compact, with the lace museum and the town's older houses around it.
On the ground Everything in central Alençon is within about eight minutes of this square, including the station approach and the Martin house.
A narrow street of shuttered town houses running north-east from the center. Number 50 is the Martin house, and the domed chapel of 1928 stands beside it.
On the ground About eight minutes uphill from the basilica and about fifteen from the station. The chapel is entered at street level; the house has stairs between floors.
The two anchors
Everything else in Martin Alençon is a stop on the walk between them.
THE OLD STREETS NORTH-EAST OF THE BASILICA
Zélie's family home from 1844, the Martin household's home from 1871, the room where Thérèse was born in January 1873 and the room where Zélie died in August 1877. The chapel beside it, built in 1928, holds relics of all three.
PLACE DE LA MAGDELEINE, IN THE CENTER OF THE OLD TOWN
The flamboyant Gothic parish church of Alençon, a minor basilica since 2009. Louis and Zélie were married here at midnight on July 13, 1858; Thérèse was baptized here on January 4, 1873; Zélie's funeral was sung here in 1877.
Sacred map
4 Essential Places shown.
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Suggested pilgrimages
3 in Alençon
Suggested order. Verify opening hours, transit, and walking conditions before you go.
The household and the church that married it, and nothing else.
Saves the whole sequence to your journey. Shape it into a plan later.
Suggested order. Verify opening hours, transit, and walking conditions before you go.
Meeting, marriage, work, children, and the room where it ended.
Saves the whole sequence to your journey. Shape it into a plan later.
Suggested order. Verify opening hours, transit, and walking conditions before you go.
What the sanctuary is actually for.
Saves the whole sequence to your journey. Shape it into a plan later.
Suggested order. Verify opening hours, transit, and walking conditions before you go.
How My Journey works →Each entry named and sourced
Alençon is not a relic city. What it holds is the ordinary sacramental furniture of one household: a font, a nave, a bedroom. The one reliquary here honors all three canonized Martins together.
THE SAINTE-THéRèSE CHAPEL, BESIDE THE MARTIN HOUSE
Documented relics of canonized saints, in the custody of the Sanctuary of Louis and Zélie.
Relics of Louis and Zélie Martin and of their youngest daughter are venerated together beside the chapel altar, in three cases whose ornament names each of them: watch gearing for Louis, lace for Zélie, a rose for Thérèse.
Visit Maison Martin, Birthplace of Saint ThérèseTHE NORTH CHAPEL OF THE BASILICA OF NOTRE-DAME
Documented sacramental site; the baptism is recorded and the chapel is identified as its place by the sanctuary.
Thérèse Martin was baptized here on January 4, 1873. This is a sacramental place rather than a reliquary: the font, a modern window of the baptism, and walls of thanksgiving plaques left by pilgrims since.
Visit Basilique Notre-Dame d'AlençonTHE MARTIN HOUSE, SEEN FROM THE CHAPEL
Documented location; the interpretation of individual furnishings belongs to the sanctuary.
The room where Thérèse was born on January 2, 1873 is seen from the chapel through a glazed bronze doorway rather than entered. The sanctuary is the authority on which furnishings in the house are original to the family and which are of the period.
Visit Maison Martin, Birthplace of Saint ThérèseVisit rhythm
Plan 1
If you are driving through, take these two. The house on rue Saint-Blaise is the heart of the sanctuary and the basilica is eight minutes downhill from it. Two and a half hours does both honestly, including the introductory film.
Plan 2
The bridge where they met, the church where they were married, the streets where they worked, the house where the children were born, and the room where Zélie died. It is a short walk and a long story, and it ends pointing at Lisieux.
Plan 3
Two towns, two days, about two hours of road between them. Alençon holds the marriage and the birth; Lisieux holds the childhood, the Carmel and the relics. Done in that order the family story runs forward rather than backward.
Practical, not booking
The Martin house and the basilica are both free; the sanctuary asks a donation at the house, which maintains it.
The house is closed on Sunday mornings, on Mondays outside the summer season, and for the whole of January. The chapel beside it is open daily and keeps longer hours than the house.
Mass is celebrated at midday on most weekdays in the Sainte-Thérèse chapel, and on Sunday late morning in the basilica.
Le Pavillon, Saint-Pierre de Montsort and the house of Rose Taillé at Semallé are shown by arrangement with the sanctuary rather than on fixed hours. Semallé also opens on the first Sunday afternoon of the month from May to October.
The feast of Saints Louis and Zélie Martin falls on July 12, the anniversary of their wedding here. The sanctuary keeps it with a fuller schedule, and the town is busier around it.
The sanctuary was established in 2015, after the canonization, and is directed towards married couples and families. Anniversaries and family pilgrimages can be arranged with it directly.
Alençon is about two hours from Lisieux by road, and there is no quick rail connection between the two; a car is the practical way to join them.
From Paris, the usual approach is by rail to Le Mans and a regional train on to Alençon, or about two hours by road. The station is about fifteen minutes on foot from the basilica.
Everything in Martin Alençon is walkable. The house is the only site with stairs between floors.
One household
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