The Benedictine abbey church of Lébény was built between 1199 and 1203 and is one of the most outstanding and most intact monuments of Hungarian ecclesiastical architecture of the Middle Ages. From an artistic point of view, the elements of plastic art wall decorations are of exceptional value.
The church is a splendid representation of Romanesque architecture. It has three naves with semicircular apses and there are two pyramidal towers on its western façade with a gallery in between. Especially noteworthy are the carved stones decorating the building, like for example the inimitable carved ornaments of the main entrance and the southern side portal.
The abbey survived the Middle Ages without any significant alterations, but in 1478 it burnt down. The monks returned after the catastrophe but when flames consumed the monastery for a second time in 1563, it became abandoned definitely.The uninhabited buildings were given to the Jesuits of Győr, and in 1638 they built the new, vaulted parts of the church. The original medieval vaulting remained unharmed in very few places only, for instance in the lower part of the towers.
The interior was transformed into Baroque during the 18th century. The buildings of the abbey disappeared already in the 19th century, but the church continued to function as a parish church of the village nearby. In the second half of the 19th century the Office of Protection of Historical monuments recognised the special architectural importance of the church and several restorations have taken place since and considerable research by art historians focused on the building.
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.