In 831, some Venetian merchants arrived near Cropani on their way back from Alexandria where they had collected the remains of the Evangelist Mark. According to this reconstruction, the ship was caught in a bad storm and wrecked near the beach of Cropani. The inhabitants aided the merchants who, as a sign of recognition, gave them a fragment of the kneecap of the saint’s right knee, kept in the church of Santa Maria Assunta (the Duomo).
Later, the merchants awarded the people of Cropani the honorary citizenship of Venice.The mother church or the Assunta is a monumental building whose first layout dates to the 13th century. The structure was built with large blocks of tufaceous granite and stands out because of its imposing bell tower, 43 metres high compared to the original 47.
The church of the Assunta houses notable works of art including statues, relics, paintings and frescoes in 18th century Baroque style and a notable wooden ceiling with arabesques with 15th century paintings.
The little ‘Antiquarium Diocesano’ museum inside the Duomo can be visited. It holds many works of sacred art including half-bust reliquaries sculptured in the round, finely decorated in damascened gold leaf dating to the 16th century, precious silver items and sacred 18th century vestments and also an interesting marble tabernacle sculptured bas-relief dating to 1545.
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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.