Oostakker Basilica

The Basilica of Our Lady of the Immaculate Conception in Oostakker, a district of Gent, is a neo-Gothic pilgrimage church built in 1877 and elevated to the rank of Basilica minor. Its origins trace directly to the Lourdes apparitions of 1858: local countess Visart de Bocarmé commissioned a replica Lourdes grotto on the estate after reportedly witnessing a miraculous healing, and pilgrims began arriving before the church itself was even completed. The slender flying buttresses and prominent tower are characteristic of late-19th-century Belgian neo-Gothic ecclesiastical architecture, and the complex is protected as heritage under Flemish law. Each year thousands of pilgrims from Belgium and the Netherlands converge on the grotto, with the largest gatherings around the Feast of the Assumption on 15 August.