The Château de Fère-en-Tardenois is a ruined castle in the commune of Fère-en-Tardenois in the Aisne département. Construction of the original castle began in 1206. Little of that remains today. It had seven towers on an enormous artificial motte whose slopes were covered in slabs of sandstone and served as a model for numerous other castles. The connétable Anne de Montmorency, companion of Francis I, transformed the castle in around 1528. In 1555, he enlarged it with the addition of the famous Renaissance bridge carrying a covered gallery. These works were carried out by the architect Jean Bullant (who constructed the gallery at the Château de Chenonceaux) and, possibly, the sculptor Jean Goujon, which would explain the quality of the sculptures, the stone and the colours.
Ownership of the castle is shared by the département and a private company. 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.