In the 17th century, Copenhagen had become home to a sizeable garrison. A military church was built at Kastellet in 1670 but its modest size only allowed it to serve the personnel at the fortress. The rest of the troops in the city had to use Church of Holmen, a former anchor forge which had been converted into a naval church in 1619.
When Sophie Amalienborg burned down in 1689, its chapel survived the flames and was subsequently put at the disposal of the Army. However, the small building which had been built for members of the royal court only served as a temporary solution. Christian V therefore provided a tract of land at Dronningens Tværgade for the construction of a new church for the Army and military engineer Georg Philip Müller completed a set of renderings in 1697. When Frederick IV ascended the throne in 1699, he moved the project to a site in the southernmost section of Sophie Amalienborg's former gardens. Construction began in 1703, still to Müller's design but under the supervision of Domenico Pelli. The following year it was decided to built the church to a larger and somewhat modified design and the project was taken over by General Master Builder Wilhelm Friedrich von Platen. The church was inaugurated on 24 March 1706.
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.