Château de Castries has belonged to the House of Castries since 1465. In 1565, Jacques de Castries undertook the building of a new château. The garden was laid out by André Le Nôtre in 1666. The aqueduct, to water the garden, was built by Pierre-Paul Riquet.
The main house was looted and damaged during the French Revolution of 1789 and was restored in 1828. In 1935, it was bought back by René de La Croix de Castries. In 1985, he donated the house to the Académie française. It is open to the public.
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.