Le Sanctuaire de Notre Dame de Fresneau

For ten centuries, visitors to the vallon de Fresneau have been touched by this beautiful oasis of greenery at the entrance to the great Marsanne forest. In all seasons, people fill jerry cans with the fresh, pure water that flows from the "miraculous" fountain...

It's true that a young girl, blind from birth, recovered her sight there a few centuries ago. Her father was a small stonecutter in a quarry a little further away. In the evenings, around the time of his return, she liked to wait for him under the shade of tall ash trees. One day, as Marie-Anne drifted off to sleep, she saw the Virgin Mary say to her in a dream: "Build me a chapel on that spot and you'll have a view. Her father, to whom she often spoke about this, ended up building an oratory, which was later replaced by a chapel. Marie-Anne bathed her eyes at the fountain and joyfully exclaimed, "I see!" Such was the origin of the pilgrimage to Notre-Dame de Fresneau, also known as Notre-Dame des Bois, then Notre-Dame du Bon Secours.

On September 8, 1855, in the presence of four bishops and twenty thousand people, the coronation celebrations of Notre Dame de Fresneau took place. In the same year, a register presented by the bishop of Valence and the archbishop of Paris reported numerous healings by the fountain's water. On September 8, 1860, the "grand sanctuaire" was inaugurated.

The sanctuary comprises a chapel (1605), a 19th-century church, the Saint Joseph house and a miraculous fountain... in the communal forest, one of the oldest in France.