Shortly after the year 1000, the bishops of Poitiers from the Isembert family, succeeding a family named Chauvigny, became lords of Chauvigny, and later barons from the 14th century onward. The baronial castle, also known as the Bishops’ Castle, was built in the 11th century by them. The quadrangular keep dates from the mid-11th century. Starting in 1397, Ithier de Mareuil, bishop of Poitiers from 1394 to 1405, added a second keep to the castle. Today, it hosts falconry shows.
The structure is a complex building, 80 meters long and 50 meters wide. It was frequently damaged and altered. By the late 17th century, it was already nearly abandoned.
You can still see a first enclosure with the original 11th-century entrance, a powerful 12th-century keep, the ruins of the 'new castle' built around 1400 (of which an impressive wall section remains, showing two stories of apartments) and the Saint-Michel chapel with its chapter room above. Access to the inner courtyards and buildings of the second enclosure (12th–16th centuries), including kitchens, bakeries, stables, a well, and a tunnel, was via a drawbridge. The castle chapel can be recognized by its vaulted ceiling bearing the coat of arms of Ithier de Mareuil.
The castle's current ruined state is due to its sale as national property during the French Revolution, after which the buyer turned the fortress into a stone quarry.
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.