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The original church in the settlement of Sveti Tomaž, dedicated to Saint Thomas, was a Romanesque structure with a square nave and a rounded apse. The remains of this are still visible in the corner of the sanctuary. The surviving sanctuary is mostly Gothic, dating to around 1500.
The church was rebuilt a number of times, most extensively in 1848 when three layers of frescos were revealed, the oldest dating to the early 14th century, the second layer to around 1400, and the top layer to the early 16th century.
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.