The Bremen Ratskeller is the council wine cellar of the Townhall of Bremen. Since 1330 the Council of Bremen held the privilege of white wine which was valid until 1815. No citizen should sell wine without the permission of the Council. All wines had to be stored in the Cellar of the Council. The purpose was to control the prices and the payment of taxes.
The Ratskeller was built in 1405 and it is one of the oldest wine cellars of Germany, furthermore the oldest wine barrel of Germany, a wine from Rüdesheim which is dated 1653, is stored here.
In the cellar there has long been a traditional tavern and today a large part of it is a gourmet restaurant. With about 650 varieties the Ratskeller has the world's greatest selection of German wines exclusively, even in total there are about 1,200 different spirits available.
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.