The first church on the site was built in 1524. The first wooden church was called St. Jonas Baptist church, The Virgin Maria Assumption church and St. Nicola’s church. After the church burnt, in 1818 a new stone church in classical style was built next to the old church. In the honour of the priest Liudvikas Kaminskas, the initiator of the construction, the church was sacred to the memory of St. Louis. Today this is the oldest church of Alytus that still has a ringing XVII century found bell. A canvas of St. Louis painted in XIX century also remained to this day.
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.