Looking at its tranquil location in farmland near Brecon today, you’d never guess that Gaer was once one of the Romans’ largest inland forts and a vital link in the occupiers’ defensive network in Wales. Founded around AD 75, it was situated in a strategic position at the meeting point of two major roads and manned by highly trained legionaries of the Vettonian Spanish Cavalry Regiment.
In Roman times this was a busy site, with a large guardhouse, granary and heated bathhouse. Today you can see remains of a number of defensive towers, alongside two large gateways with walls standing 8ft/2.4m high in places.
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.