The Achi monastery is a single-nave hall church, built of hewn stone. Constructed at the end of the 13th century or in the early 14th, it was later reroofed, renovated and surrounded by a defensive wall. The whole interior is frescoed. Some murals, stylistically dated to the late 13th century and betraying affinities with the Palaeologan art, are iconographic rarities, such as those depicting the life of Saint George.
The Achi monastery was favored by the Princes of Guria, especially Simon I Gurieli and Kaikhosro I Gurieli in the 17th century. Both made significant donations to the church and Kaikhosro made it a metochion of the bishopric see of Shemokmedi. The abbotship of Achi was then hereditary in the Salukvadze-Taqaishvili family. The church housed a gilded silver cross with a Georgian inscription mentioning the queen Tamar, which was discovered by Ekvtime Taqaishvili. The item was preserved in the Salukvadze family during the Soviet period and returned to the Achi church in 2015.
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.