Sainte Thérèse of Lisieux — officially Marie-Françoise-Thérèse Martin — was born in Alençon on 2 January 1873. The house where she was born, on the Rue Saint-Blaise, is now a pilgrimage site and museum visited by thousands of Catholics every year. Thérèse entered the Carmelite order at fifteen and died of tuberculosis at twenty-four, having written the spiritual memoir that became The Story of a Soul — one of the most widely read religious texts of the 20th century.
The house has been preserved with period furnishings and tells the story of the Martin family, including Thérèse's parents Louis and Zélie, who were both canonised in 2015 — the first married couple to be jointly canonised in modern times. Entry is free. For those with no interest in Catholic devotion, it is still a well-preserved 19th-century bourgeois home with an interesting family story.