The Steinsches Schloss is a town palace located in the center of Nassau. It served as the residence of the noble family vom Stein and was, among others, where the Prussian reform minister Heinrich Friedrich Karl vom und zum Stein grew up.
The predecessor of the castle was a tithing farm (Zehnthof), which the vom Stein family had owned since the 14th century. At the outset of the Thirty Years' War, the now prosperous and influential family relocated their seat from the Steinsche Burg outside Nassau to this complex. Over the ensuing centuries, the former farm was transformed and expanded into a castle.
By 1621, the main building was completed in the style of Late Renaissance. In 1755, two Baroque wings were added. Heinrich Friedrich Karl vom und zum Stein commissioned the Wiesbaden architect Christian Zais and later, in 1818, the master builder Johann Claudius von Lassaulx for an expansion to commemorate the Wars of Liberation. In 1815/16, an octagonal Neo-Gothic tower was added. A source indicates that during the 19th century, stained glass windows from the St. Kastor Church (Dausenau) were 'relocated' to the tower.
Following preliminary investigations in the years 2011-2012, the tower was extensively restored with funds from the state of Rhineland-Palatinate by 2018. In the ground floor, the marble baths intended for ritual cleansing before entering the memorial were restored, and a chapel originally planned there was established after 200 years. The Baron's study on the middle floor, with its walk-in library shelves, and the cult site on the upper floor, with sculptures of the three monarchs Friedrich Wilhelm III, Franz I, and Alexander I by Christian Daniel Rauch, were returned to their original condition.
The castle is owned by the female descendants of the vom Stein family, the Counts of Kanitz. The Castle Cappenberg, where Baron vom und zum Stein lived for many years and which he chose as his retirement residence, is also owned by the Counts of Kanitz through inheritance.
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.