The Castello di Montesarchio is a castle in Montesarchio, Campania, Italy. The castle is sited atop Monte Taburno, and had been the site of prior fortifications during the medieval period, including occupations by Lombards and Normans. The present structure was mainly erected during the Aragonese rule of the Kingdom.
Following the Italian War of 1542-1546 between the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V and King Francis I of France, the castle was confiscated and given in 1532 to the Marquis of the Vasto, Alfonso II d’Avalos. In 1830, the castle was confiscated by the kingdom and turned into a prison. Among the famous mid-19th-century patriots jailed here were Carlo Poerio, Sigismondo Castromediano, Michele Pironti, and Nicola Nisco. The castle remained a prison until the end of the Second World War, and during the 1960s it served as an orphanage.
Since 2007, it has housed an archaeologic museum of the region: the Museo Archeologico Nazionale del Sannio Caudino di Montesarchio.
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.