Pierre de Montfaucon built the Château de Saint-Mesmin around 1370. In the Middle Ages, the castle was surrounded by water moats. The Montfaucon family fortified the castle by adding the imposing keep crowned with a walkway. It is then accessed by a drawbridge.
This castle was besieged only once in the Middle Ages. Later it was besieged during the French Revolution in 1796. Today Château de Saint-Mesmin is open to the public.
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.