The Château d'Ambleville is a French Renaissance style château located within the regional park of Vexin. The gardens are classified among the Notable Gardens of France.
The château was built in the 16th century for the seigneurs of Ambleville and Villarceaux by architect Jean Grappin, on the foundations of a medieval castle on the banks of the Aubette. In the 17th century, the house was acquired by the Duke of Villeroy, Nicolas V, the Ambassador of France to Medicis. He created a garden in the Florentine style. The house was purchased in 1893 by Charles Sedelmeyer (1837–1925), who restored the chateau and added a theater and Venetian chimneys and balconies. In 1928 the new owner, the Marquise de Villefranche, remade the gardens after those of the recently restored gardens of the Villa Gamberaia in Florence. Today they offer one of the best examples of an Italian Renaissance garden in France.
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.