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Founded: 1790-1793Category: Castles and fortifications in Finland
Historical period: The Age of Enlightenment (Finland)
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Kärnäkoski fortress was part of the South-Eastern Finland fortification system built by Russians in the 1790's. Purpose of the fortress was to protect the strategic road to St. Petersburg and Russians fleet in Saimaa against Swedish enemies from the west. Building was started in 1790 by French engineer officers and it's a tradional French bastion system. Approximately 1400 Russian soldiers and local peasants were forced to construction work and many of them died in hard work and illnesses.
Kärnäkoski protected the border only 15 years and after Finnish War in 1808-1809 fortress lost its defensive value. Kärnäkoski was disbanded in 1835 by the tsar Nicholas I. After that fortress was disarmed, buildings and remaining equipment were auctioned and the walls and fortifications were left untended. Kärnäkoski never took part to a military action, but in Finland Civil War (1918) several battles were fought nearby.
Today Kärnäkoski fortress is a tourist attraction, although there are no guided tours or other tourist or travel services in the fortress, simply guidance signs. Finnish National Board of Antiquities and Finnish Ministry of the Environment have listed the fortress area as nationally significant cultural historic landmark. NBA has restored Kärnäkoski fortress to its former shape together with other fortresses in south-eastern Finland. Walls were repaired and the fortress area was restored and cleared. Other historical buildings nearby are an old barge harbor, mill and saw built in 1830s and a double-arch stone bridge from 1886. The mill has not been used since 1950s, but was restored by a local village organization in 2002.
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.