User Reviews
In 1572, during the Eighty Year War with the Spaniards, Sea Beggars (Calvinist Dutch nobles) captured Brielle. After this work began on replacing the Medieval town walls with a modern fortress. This process of modernisation and replacement continued until 1713. The fortress ring has nine bastions and five ravelins and was designed by the fortress builders Willem Paen and Menno van Coehoorn. Since 1713 there have been few changes to the fortress, so the defences are some of the most important fortifications remaining in the Netherlands. It is possible to walk all the way around the walls to view them. Besides the walls there are also various buildings in the town centre which once had a military function, such as the Arsenaal, the Infirmerie and the Hoofdwacht (main guardhouse).
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.