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Little model boats hang from the ceiling and maritime paintings adorn the walls of the basilica of Notre Dame de la Garde, which from the city's highest hill overlooks the bay of Marseille, where sailing regattas are being held for the 2024 Olympics.
They’re votive offerings — some more than 200 years old — that residents of this Mediterranean port city continue to bring in gratitude to the Virgin Mary for everything from avoiding shipwrecks to successful rescues of migrants trying to make it to Europe on unseaworthy boats.
“Since its origins, Notre Dame de la Garde has been venerated by all seafarers,” said Jean-Michel Sanchez, the head conservator of the basilica’s museum. “Marseille was born of the sea.”
He estimates the basilica’s collection of ex-votos, as the offerings are called, at several thousands, including many in storage. And that’s after those predating the French Revolution were destroyed in the anticlerical violence that followed it.
Offerings shaped in reference to prayers answered – from babies to limbs, from vehicles to sports jerseys – are common across Catholic and Orthodox churches in Southern Europe especially, and in parts of the United States.
The nautical motifs that dominate Marseille’s landmark church are inextricably linked to the city's 2,600-year-old seafaring history.
The first chapel was built in the 1200s on a barren rocky outcrop above the main port. In the 16th century, France’s king ordered the construction of a fort around the chapel to defend the growing harbor. Most of it still serves as the pedestal on which the massive basilica that replaced the chapel was built in the 1850s.
The name itself speaks to that connection between guarding the port and divine protection, Sanchez said. “Garde” means guard in French.
Inside the church, the models hanging from the ceiling include elegant sailboats, three-masted ships and utilitarian cargo vessels. About once a month someone brings a new one — sometimes with an explanation, sometimes anonymously, most handmade.
Among the most recent additions is a helicopter, donated a few years ago by civil defense forces. They were grateful for never having had an accident while conducting high-risk rescues of climbers in Marseille’s calanques, narrow inlets east of the Olympic marina, said Marie Aubert, who works with the basilica’s historical collections.
Hundreds of marble plaques, some just inscribed “merci a N D” — thank you to Our Lady — pack the walls. So many continue to be donated that church officials are now lining the terrace walls outside with them.
“The connection of the people of Marseille with the Bonne Mère is transmitted from generation to generation,” said the basilica’s rector, the Rev. Olivier Spinosa, using the popular name for the church, French for “good mother.”
One chapel is decorated with paintings of boats, including a 2011 work donated by a ship’s two captains. It gives thanks for their crews’ rescue of nearly two dozen North African migrants in the Mediterranean, Spinosa said.
The painting is inscribed with a prayer for all victims of trafficking and illegal immigration — one of Europe’s political flashpoints and a recurring source of tragedy, with estimates of nearly 30,000 migrants dying trying to cross the sea in the past decade.
Both were themes of Pope Francis’ visit to Marseille last fall and the prayer service he celebrated by the basilica.
In its apse, behind a statue of Mary that arrived, of course, by boat, is a 19th-century mosaic of a ship sailing between choppy and calm seas by a lighthouse. It’s an allegory of the church traversing the storms of history, with Mary providing the guiding light.
“The Bonne Mère is a mother who welcomes everyone,” Spinosa said. “Like the soul of Marseille.”
