Notre-Dame-des-Victoires

Louis XIII founded the church in 1629, entrusting his victories to the Virgin. Carle Van Loo’s eighteenth-century canvases tell the life of Saint Augustine and the siege of La Rochelle. In December 1836 the abbé Dufriche-Desgenettes founded here an association of prayer to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, which became an archconfraternity, and tens of thousands of ex-votos, plaques of thanks, now cover the walls. Saint Thérèse of Lisieux came here to thank the Virgin for her healing. In the photograph her statue stands above an altar, and the walls around it are covered with the thanks of others.