Coevorden Castle was built on an artificial hill - a so-called motte - near a ford (a “voorde”) in the river the Kleine Vecht. This koevoorde (lit. “cow ford”) gave the city its name. In 1046, German emperor Henry III gave the county of Drenthe to the bishop of Utrecht, who appointed a viscount, a hereditary title. In 1395, Bishop Frederik van Blankenheim brought this to an end, and decreed that castle Coevorden should be the only castle in Drenthe. This is still the case today. Today Coevorden castle is a restaurant.
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.