Lourdes (Gascon language: Lord) is the most visited Catholic pilgrimage site in the world, located in south-western France in the department of Hautes-Pyrénées. The city is. 15,000 inhabitants (2003).
The town lies at the foothills of the Pyrenees, at an altitude of 420 m above nm, being crossed by the river Gave de Pau. The town is a museum with exhibits of the Protestant religion and the paintings of Franz Schrader French painter, cartographer and student
of nineteenth-century Pyrenean mountains. Lourdes is located south of the tip Pic Schrader (3177 m).
