Built in the late 15th century at the foot of Mount Taburno, the Sanctuary of the Virgin of Taburnus origins trace back to a 1401 legend of a deaf-mute shepherd girl, Agnese, who miraculously regained speech and hearing after encountering a statue of the Virgin Mary in a cave. The news led Count Carlo Carafa of Airola to build a chapel nearby.
In 1494 a convent was built by the grandchild of Carlo Carafa, at the time count of Airola and bearing the same name, both out of devotion, and because of the growing fame of the place, to ingratiate the devoted populace.
The church has a rectangular nave, Gothic rib vaults, and an original baked clay floor. The cloister, once two levels, now features an oculus for lighting. The portico has three arches, and the cave of the Virgin’s statue remains nearby.
A major pilgrimage site in Bucciano, especially on Divine Mercy Sunday, it has been linked to miracles. Pope Sixtus V allowed women entry four times a year, and a group of deaf visitors comes annually.
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.