The Kassari Manor, also called Saaremõisa (’Island Manor’), was founded in this location by David Johan Gaertner, the archivist of the Est- land Supreme Land Court, in 1730s. In 1758, the Stackelbergs became its new owners. That Baltic German family took care of and managed the Kassari Manor until the beginning of the 20th century.
One of the buildings that once belonged to the old manor and that have survived is the stone-built steward’s house, which later housed a school, a library and a post office and is now one of the sites of the Hiiumaa Museum. Other buildings surviving from the manor are the stone-built stable, the gardener’s house, granary and the big Dutch-style windmill. Here and there, one can also spot the remnants of the limestone wall, once surrounding the manor centre, as well as the foundations of some buildings.
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.