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Founded: 12th centuryCategory: Historic city squares, old towns and villages in Switzerland
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Saint-Ursanne is an old town which has preserved much of its medieval character. The town contains many historical buildings, including a Romanesque abbey church, a collegiate church, a cloister, many medieval houses, a hermitage and an 18th-century bridge. The river Doubs makes a loop near Saint-Ursanne before flowing into France. Since 2009 Saint-Ursanne has been a part of the new municipality Clos du Doubs.
The town is famous for the medieval festival which it organizes each summer. Its name refers to Saint Ursicinus, a seventh-century monk who built a monastery here.
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.