Les Buissonnets
Les Buissonnets is the house Louis Martin rented in November 1877, weeks after his wife Zélie died in Alençon, and where Thérèse lived from the age of four until she entered the Carmel at fifteen. It has been shown to pilgrims since 1931.
- Location
- Lisieux, France
- 49.1510° N · 0.2293° E
- Type
- Pilgrimage
- A nineteenth-century Norman house of brick and render, set in its own garden
- Dedication
- Not a church; the Martin family home
The House on the Hill
Every other place in Lisieux shows you Thérèse after she had become someone. This one shows the eleven years before. She called it her sweet childhood nest, and she also called this the most painful period of her life, and both are true: it is the house where she was loved, and the house she watched her sisters leave one by one for the Carmel. If you want to understand the Little Way, it starts in these rooms rather than in the basilica.
Eleven Years
Zélie Martin died in Alençon in August 1877. Louis moved the family north to Lisieux that November, to be near Zélie's brother and his wife, and rented this house on the road out toward Pont-l'Évêque. Thérèse was four. She lived here until 9 April 1888, when she left at fifteen to enter the Carmel in the town below. Three moments in her own account happened inside these walls or in the garden: the healing she attributed to the smile of the Virgin on 13 May 1883, when she was ten; the Christmas night of 1886 when, coming home from midnight Mass at the cathedral, she found herself changed and afterwards called it her complete conversion; and Pentecost 1887, when she asked her father in the garden for permission to enter Carmel and he gave it. A community of Oblate sisters has welcomed pilgrims here since 1931.
An ordinary Norman house of the period, comfortable rather than grand, set back in a walled garden on rising ground above the town. Its ordinariness is the point.
A place is significant when it is still used.
This is a house rather than a church, and pilgrims are shown round it rather than left to pray in it. What it offers is not an atmosphere of prayer but a scale: small rooms, a family table, a garden. It makes the rest of Lisieux legible.
What to notice, without rushing.
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01
The dining room
The family ate here on the day of her First Communion in May 1884, and again on her last evening at home before she entered the Carmel.
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02
Her bedroom
The room where, on 13 May 1883, the ten-year-old Thérèse was healed of a grave illness. She described it all her life as the smile of the Virgin.
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03
The fireplace
Associated with the Christmas night of 1886. She came home from midnight Mass at the cathedral, expected the childish ritual of shoes by the hearth, overheard her father's weariness with it, and instead of weeping found herself changed. She called it her complete conversion.
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04
The garden
At Pentecost 1887 she asked her father here for permission to enter Carmel at fifteen. He picked a small white flower with its root intact and gave it to her, and she kept the image for the rest of her life.
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- The garden At Pentecost 1887 she asked her father here for permission to enter Carmel at fifteen. He picked a small white flower with its root intact and gave it to her, and she kept the image for the rest of her life.
Entering as a pilgrim, not a tourist.
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Not a place of Mass; a house shown to pilgrims
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Welcomed by a community of Oblate sisters since 1931
Open most days, and closed on Sunday mornings.
- Entry
- By donation, which maintains the house
- Closed
- Sunday mornings, 15 August, 25 December, 1 January
- Typical hours
- Roughly 10:00 to 16:00 in winter, later with a midday break in summer
- Getting there
- About 20 minutes uphill on foot from the station
What pilgrims come to venerate here.
Tomb and Burial
- No one is buried here. This is a house, not a shrine church.
Relics and Sacred Tradition
- The house preserves furniture, objects and rooms associated with the Martin family rather than bodily relics. Some pieces are original to the family and some are of the period; the sanctuary is the authority on which is which.
Sacred Objects
- The dining room, where the family ate together on the day of her First Communion and on her last evening at home.
- The bedroom associated with her healing on 13 May 1883, which she described as the smile of the Virgin.
- The kitchen fireplace, associated with the Christmas night of 1886 that she called her complete conversion.
- The garden statue where, at Pentecost 1887, she asked her father's permission to enter Carmel at fifteen.
How this place gathers the saints.
The rest of Theresian Lisieux
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City hub
Lisieux
Where this church sits within the wider Catholic geography of Lisieux.
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Former cathedral
Cathédrale Saint-Pierre de Lisieux
The parish church the family walked to every Sunday, and where she made her first confession.
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Carmelite monastery
Carmel de Lisieux
The monastery she left this house for, and where her relics rest.
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Pilgrimage basilica
Basilique Sainte-Thérèse de Lisieux
Raised after her canonization, and holding the relics of the parents who lived in this house.
Plan around this place.
Written from the Sanctuary of Lisieux site, which administers the house, and from Thérèse's own account in Story of a Soul, with the Wikimedia image provenance given in the credits. Rooms and objects are described as the sanctuary describes them.
August 5, 2026
Photo credits
- Hero. Photo: Nono vlf, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Source. CC BY-SA 4.0.