The Château du Girsberg is one of three castles (with the Château de Saint-Ulrich and the Haut-Ribeaupierre) which overlook the municipality of Ribeauvillé.
The Lords of Ribeaupierre built the castle, then named Stein (La Roche), in the 13th century. They rebuilt it after a fire caused by lightning in 1288. In 1304, they gave it to their vassals, the knights of Guirsberg, from whom the castle took its name. The Guirsbergs kept it until they died out in the 15th century. It was abandoned in the 17th century.
The remains currently visible contains 13th century pentagonal keep, inner court and corps de logis from the 14th-15th centuries.
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.