St. Nicholas Cathedral is a Gothic church established in circa 1247. When the burghers of Elbing (Elbląg) first attempted to adopt the Protestant Reformation in 1525, the provost of St. Nicholas Church maintained Catholic practice. Since 1539 the city council tacitly tolerated and gradually openly promoted Lutheranism, so that St. Nicholas Church had become a Lutheran church by 1573.
Following King Sigismund III's Prussian regency contract (1605) with Joachim Frederick of Brandenburg and his Prussian enfeoffment contract (Treaty of Warsaw, 1611) with John Sigismund of Brandenburg these two rulers of Ducal Prussia guaranteed free practice of Catholic religion in prevailingly Lutheran Prussia. Based on these contracts Prince-Bishop Szymon Rudnicki of Ermland/Warmia achieved the restitution of St. Nicholas as Roman Catholic parish church in 1612, then the only one in Elbing, and remaining a Catholic church since.
St. Nicholas was damaged by fire in the late 18th century, then destroyed in World War II and reconstructed. In 1992, the building was elevated to the status of cathedral.
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.