The Château de Hohbarr (Haut-Barr) is a medieval castle, first built in 1100, above the city of Saverne in what is now the French département of Bas-Rhin. It was built on sandstone rock 460m above the valley of Zorn and the plain of Alsace. Because of this, it has been called the eye of Alsace.
The current castle was built in 1583 by Jean de Manderscheid. The Peace of Westphalia mandated the destruction of several castles, including Hohbarr, but after the beginning of the War of the Spanish Succession, in 1701, the fortress was back in use. It was abandoned around 1770, but the vault continued to be occupied until the French Revolution.
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.