This religious building located in Carras, in a western district of the city, was built in 1911. At that time, the neighborhood was rural with small houses and their gardens.
There was an airfield where aviators would fly their peculiar machines, among them was Maïcon, one of those sky enthusiasts. Ambitious plans intended for a significant land area, with the choir supposed to be located where the Promenade des Anglais is today. Saint Laurent du Var was reached via the inland road. With the war, the work was interrupted, and the project was reduced to a much more modest size.
In fact, it turned out to be just a modest chapel, with only the nave completed. Between 1927 and 1930, Canon Gasiglia tried to revive the old plans or at least provide the western districts of the city with a larger church. His project did not succeed.
In 1960, Notre Dame de Lourdes was restored. In the plans for urbanization and the westward development of the city, it was planned to demolish it, but where to rebuild a place of worship in this neighborhood?
Maître Jacques Peyrat, former mayor and senator of Nice, spoke about it with nostalgia: “Notre Dame de Lourdes is the first church I entered when I came to Nice in 1945.” The last mass was celebrated on January 25, 2003, before it crumbled under the blows of the bulldozers.
Today, in a glass building, sad and impersonal, a space has been reserved for worship. In this district of offices, dreary and bleak, animated only by the constant ballet of airplanes, a cross on a facade signals the house of God.
Even if the old church had no particular style, it possessed warmth, an intimacy, impossible to find in a sanitized and soulless space.
Thierry Jan
