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Founded: 13th centuryCategory: Castles and fortifications in France
Historical period: Late Capetians (France)
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Fort Queyras, formerly 'Château-Queyras,' is a 13th-century castle in Château-Ville-Vieille (Hautes-Alpes). Built on a rocky peak, it once defended the Guil Valley and the Haut-Dauphiné. Modified by Vauban in 1695, it was also used as a prison.
Listed as a historic monument in 1948, it was decommissioned in 1940 and returned to civilian use in 1967. Now privately owned and open to visitors, it was auctioned in 2021 for €661,000.
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.