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Founded: 13th centuryCategory: Castles and fortifications in France
Historical period: Late Capetians (France)
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The Vieux-Port (Old Harbour), is at the heart of La Rochelle. Enclosed by its mighty medieval towers (Saint Nicolas and La Chaîne), the picturesque harbour is now lined with seafood restaurants and bars.
Since the 13th century, the port of La Rochelle has occupied this site. It is likely that from the beginning it was fortified. The remaining towers date from the 14th and 15th centuries. They survived the destruction of the enclosure after the siege of 1628. On each side of the entrance, the Saint Nicolas tower, the highest, and the La Chaîne, and further on, linked to the latter by a curtain wall, the Lantern tower, both a lighthouse and a prison.
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.