Cuneo's civic museum is housed within the monumental complex of San Francesco, which is undoubtedly the most important medieval building in town. This neighbourhood was one of the oldest in the city and housed a church dedicated to the saint from Assisi as early as the end of the 13th century. A larger church with a cloister was built in the 14th century and then it was further enlarged in the following century. Noble families, guilds and the municipality itself had their altar inside this building and so took great care to decorate it and look after it. Many illustrious representatives of the town were buried here, and their tombstones line the floor of the church.
Not only religious ceremonies were held here, but also political agreements and public meetings. After Napoleon's suppression of the religious orders in 1802, this church was closed for worship and completely stripped of all its assets. After a series of events, the church passed into the hands of Cuneo’s municipality, which in the 1980s decided to set up a Civic Museum inside it. Today the church space is used for important exhibitions, concerts and cultural events.
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.