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Founded: 12th centuryCategory: Castles and fortifications in France
Historical period: Birth of Capetian dynasty (France)
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The Château de Pierre-Percée ('pierced rock castle') in the commune of Pierre-Percée. The site in the early 12th century was in possession of Agnès, countess of Bar and widow of the count of Langenstein. She married Hermann II, Count of Salm and son of Hermann I, King of Germania (Eastern Francia). A well dug (~30 m) into the rock gives the village and the castle their name. The territory, which included the towns of Badonviller (which became the capital of the county) and Blâmont, became for several hundred years part of the hereditary property of the Counts of Salm. Around 1134, Hermann II went to war allied to the Duke of Lorraine against the Count of Bar and Stephan of Bar, the Bishop of Metz, himself a member of the Bar family. Hermann was killed on the battlefield outside the Château de Frouard. The castle at Pierre-Percée was besieged for a year and fell into the hands of the bishop of Metz with the death of Hermann's eldest son.
The castle was not besieged again until the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648) when, being deserted, it was destroyed by Franco-Swedish troops.
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.