Ballintubber Abbey founded by King Cathal Crobdearg Ua Conchobair in 1216. It was built in Hiberno Romanesque style, characterized by the chevron archivolts and foliate capitals of the three light-transitional windows to the east. The design is a Latin-cross foundation with a nave, crossing transepts, and a rib-vaulted chancel with two chapels for each side. The abbey has gone through various renovations, mainly on re-building portions that became damaged as it withstood history.
Despite being suppressed and damaged during the Protestant Reformation, the roofless abbey continued to be used throughout penal times by Catholics. The abbey has several modern outdoor attractions, including a very modern abstract Stations of the Cross, an underground permanent Crib, and a Rosary Way. There is a small museum.
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.