Liebenzell Castle is a hill castle above the town of Bad Liebenzell. The fortification was once the most important castle in the Württemberg part of the Black Forest. The castle was built in the 12th century by the counts of Calw. In 1196 the counts of Eberstein were recorded as the castle's owners. From 1220 to 1230 the castle was extended. It was destroyed in the 16th century and in 1692 and rebuilt in 1954.
Today the castle is owned by the International Forum of Liebenzell Castle. It is used as a youth training centre for the Bad Liebenzell International Youth Forum and has a restaurant.
The castle comprises an irregular, pentagonal fortification with a mighty shield wall, into which a square bergfried with a garderobe has been integrated. The great hall (Palas) is decorated with ornamental ogival openings. The six-storey bergfried has a height of 32 metres and has an entrance six metres in height, a wall thickness of two metres and an area of about 9 by 9 metres.
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.