The remains of the Stegeborg castle are situated beautifully on a little island in the sea channel leading toward Söderköping. In the Middle Ages the castle was one of the most important strongholds in Sweden and also a royal palace. The oldest parts of the castle is a brick tower in the southeast corner, built in the early 13th century.
In the 18th century the castle was in bad shape and some wooden buildings were even were auctioned off. In 1938 the Swedish National Heritage Board received a small sum to clear the location of trees and repair the worst damage and raise protective roofing over certain parts. The new main building (a private residence) was completed in 1806. The herb-garden was laid out in 1988 by the present owner.
Today Stegeborg is open for tourists and the castle ruins are now also a port tavern and a marina.
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.