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Saint-Christophe-le-Chaudry
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Founded: c. 1380Category: Castles and fortifications in France
Historical period: Valois Dynasty and Hundred Year's War (France)
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The Château de la Forêt-Grailly and its first lords were documented as early as 1380. This medieval fortress was fully fortified, surrounded by moats, and equipped with a drawbridge. During the Hundred Years' War, it played a key role in monitoring traffic on the nearby Arnon River.
By 1723, records describe the château as a pavilion-style residence with three corner towers, the fourth having collapsed a decade earlier. It was surrounded by water-filled moats, crossed by a wooden bridge, with walls enclosing the courtyard and farmyard. Over time, the moats were filled in, and the enclosing walls were demolished. A second corner tower disappeared in the 19th century, leaving only two. Around 1880, the château underwent another restoration, as it had in the 16th century.
Visitors can explore three vaulted ground-floor rooms, including two rib-vaulted halls from the early 15th century, adorned with naïve sculptures, and a Romanesque barrel-vaulted room.
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.