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Dating back to the 13th century, the castle of Avenches features a renovated Renaissance-style façade, one of the most beautiful testimonies of this type of architecture in Switzerland. Today, the castle accommodates offices, classrooms, a theatre, an art gallery and a library.
Located next door to the arenas, the castle of Avenches dominates the capital of Roman Switzerland. This public and historic building boasts an art gallery and a theatre, an exceptional setting where artists present their works throughout the year. Apart from these halls dedicated to the arts, the castle comprises offices, apartments, classrooms and a library.
The castle of Avenches owes its construction and emblematic keep to the bishops of Lausanne, who, as the town’s suzerains, built the building in the 13th century. The building was renovated in the 15th century and during the Bernese domination. The architects of that era spared the magnificent keep, extended the castle and added a remarkable façade, which is one of the most beautiful examples of Renaissance architecture in Switzerland.
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.