In the Roman period, the town (municipium) of Varvaria was created in the 1st century AD at the hill of Bribir (Bribirska glavica), which is now an archaeological site. Up until the Roman conquest, the Liburnians had inhabited the region, giving their name to the Roman province of Liburnia. Pliny the Elder mentioned Varvarini as one of 14 municipalities under the jurisdiction of Scardona (Skradin). In the Migration Period, after the fall of the Roman Empire, the region switched hands, being occupied by the Ostrogoths, Byzantines and then Croats.
Bribir achieved its peak in the 13th and 14th century, during the period when the members of Šubić family ruled over Croatia as the Bans of Croatia. Šubićs were called nobiles, comites or principes Breberienses (Princes of Breber). They built a large palace on the hill of Bribir, an ideal place to control the surrounding territory, overseeing all roads and approaches from the sea to the hinterland.
The town was settled by Orthodox population in the 16th century. It was part of the war-time Republic of Serbian Krajina (1991–1995).
Today the archaeological site encloses the surface of about 72,000 m2 and contains remains from the Roman era buildings and walls to churches built in the 13th and 14th centuries.
References:The Pilgrimage Church of Wies (Wieskirche) is an oval rococo church, designed in the late 1740s by Dominikus Zimmermann. It is located in the foothills of the Alps in the municipality of Steingaden.
The sanctuary of Wies is a pilgrimage church extraordinarily well-preserved in the beautiful setting of an Alpine valley, and is a perfect masterpiece of Rococo art and creative genius, as well as an exceptional testimony to a civilization that has disappeared.
The hamlet of Wies, in 1738, is said to have been the setting of a miracle in which tears were seen on a simple wooden figure of Christ mounted on a column that was no longer venerated by the Premonstratensian monks of the Abbey. A wooden chapel constructed in the fields housed the miraculous statue for some time. However, pilgrims from Germany, Austria, Bohemia, and even Italy became so numerous that the Abbot of the Premonstratensians of Steingaden decided to construct a splendid sanctuary.