The oldest part of the existing St. Pierre du Bois Church was probably built around 1375. The rest of the church dates from the 14th and 15th centuries. The church sits in beautiful surroundings on a hillside. Its floor makes this all the more apparent as it slopes one and a half metres from east to west. When refurbished in the Victorian era, men and women sat separately and even entered through different doors. The church boasts an impressive tower containing 13 bells, the largest peal in the island.
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.