The Church of St Nicholas is a Greek Catholic church in Valletta. It was originally built to serve as a Greek Orthodox church in 1569. Following the Union of Brest in 1595-96 the Greek Catholic Church came into existence. It was in 1639 that the then parish priest decided to separate from the Orthodox church and join the Greek Catholic Church.
Some time later it was decided to rebuild the church to the design of the Italian architect Francesco Buonamici. The church was rebuilt on the ground plan of a Greek cross in 1652. It has a dome over the crossing supported by four free-standing columns, and a choir in the apse. On September 17, 1766, the parish church and the Confraternity of the Holy Souls signed a concordat that regulates their relations.
The church suffered considerable damage during World War II; it was repaired by the year 1951.
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.