Details
Founded: 1649Category: Historic city squares, old towns and villages in Finland
Historical period: Swedish Empire (Finland)
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Kristiinankaupunki (Kristinestad in Swedish) was founded by Count Peter Brahe on the island of Koppö in 1649. Kristiinankaupunki has centuries old traditions as a marketing and trading town and a distinguished shipping history with its ship- and boatbuilding traditions. The beautiful town hall was built in 1856.
Today the centre of the little town of 7660 inhabitants has changed its face somewhat, but in the narrow alleys you can travel hundreds of years back in time. The authentic and picturesque wooden town with its wooden fences stems from the 18th and 19th centuries. Kristiinankaupunki is one of Scandinavia’s best preserved wooden towns.
Kristiinankaupunki is the first Finnish town to be chosen to join the international Cittaslow network.
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.