Ortenburg castle was erected in the late 11th century by ministeriales of the Bavarian Prince-Bishops of Freising, who then held large possessions in the Duchy of Carinthia. Their descendants began to call themselves Counts of Ortenburg. The castle is located on the northern slope of the Gailtal Alps overlooking the Drava valley.
Damaged by the 1348 Friuli earthquake, the significance of the castle diminuished after the extinction of the Ortenburgs in 1418. The estates were inherited by Count Hermann II of Celje and in 1456 finally seized by the Imperial House of Habsburg. In 1524 the comital title passed to Gabriel von Salamanca, who had his new residence, Porcia castle built in the nearby town of Spittal an der Drau.
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.