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The Monastery of Chrysoskalitissa is built on a rock at the south-west end of Crete. The church of the monastery is dedicated to Mother Mary and the Holy Trinity and its feast is held on August 15 (Dekapendavgoustos).
The Monastery was built during Venetian rule on the site of St. Nicholas monastery and, according to tradition, it took its name from a golden step, the final of the original ninety-eight that led to it when it was first built.
Before the Monastery of Chrysoskalitissa was built, there was another church of the Dormition of Mother Mary. The church seen today started being built before 1894.
In 1900, the Monastery was dissolved along with other ones on the island and was re-established as a convent in 1940. After the Nazi occupation of Crete, several resistance fighters were given refuge here and this is why German soldiers came to live at the premises in 1943, after they chased the monks. When the Nazi forces left, the monks returned to the monastery.
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.