Hachenburg Castle, former seat of the Counts of Sayn, was founded about 1180 by Count Heinrich II of Sayn. Building was finished in 1212 under Count Heinrich III, the founder's son, who was also mentioned as the town's and the castle's first owner. The castle church only arose in the late 15th century and underwent several remodellings until the 18th century.
In 13 October 1654, there was a great fire which burned down the inner town and also the castle. Counts Salentin von Manderscheid and Georg Friedrich von Sayn-Hachenburg undertook to build the town anew, and also the castle, although this time as a Baroque structure. The sweeping Baroque castle was built to architect Julius Ludwig Rothweil's plans between 1715 and 1746. It has had many owners over the last century. For a few decades, however, it has been the seat of Deutsche Bundesbank’s training centre and professional college.
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.