Santa Maria Maggiore church is an example of First Romanesque art. It includes the oldest cross vaults in Italy.
The oldest document mentioning the basilica is a privilege by pope Paschal II, dated 22 August 1107. Archaeological studies showed that at least two churches existed in the site before the current one, the earliest one being perhaps contemporary to the annexed baptistery of San Giovanni ad Fontes (c. 5th-7th centuries). The basilica has a nave and two aisles with a lower transept. The façade was originally embedded in the city's walls, but later the first three bays were abandoned and a new façade was obtained by closing one of the internal arches with a new wall.
The nave is characterized by arches which, at the sides, have double mullioned windows at the sides. The pillars which do not support the arches are prolonged by blind columns up to the clerestory. The longitudinal arches (those separating the nave from the aisles) are supported by semicolumns which form the pillars. The aisles are a 14th-century reconstruction of the original ones. In 1944 a crypt, perhaps unfinished, was discovered.
Adejacent to the basilica is the nearly coeval Baptistery of San Giovanni ad Fontes.
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.