Chapelle Notre Dame de la Medaille Miraculeuse

Situated across the street from Le Bon Marché department store, tucked away at the end of a courtyard, is this extraordinary chapel where, in 1830, the Virgin Mary spoke to a 24-year-old novice called Catherine Labouré. In a series of three miraculous apparitions that took place in the chapel the young nun was told to have a medal made that would protect and grace those who wore it. The first Miraculous Medals were made in 1832 – the same year a cholera epidemic plagued Paris – and its popularity spread like wild fire as wearers of the medal found themselves miraculously cured or protected from the deadly disease. Devout Roman Catholics around the world still wear the medal today.

Catherine Labouré (1806–76), the eighth child of a Burgundy farmer, was beatified in 1933 and her body moved to a reliquary beneath the altar of Our Lady of the Globe (to the right as you face the main altar) inside the Chapel of Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal.