Church in the Meadow Wieskirche

5 km/3mi southeast of Steingaden, set against the backdrop of the Ammergau Hills in the Alpine foreland, is the widely famed Wieskirche or Kirche in der Wies. This pilgrimage church, built 1746-54, is the finest achievement of the great Baroque architect Dominikus Zimmermann and one of the maturest creations of German Roccoco architecture.

The interior, with its consummate assimilation of architecture and decoration, creates a magnificent effect of light and space.

A porch leads into the oval nave with its shallow-vaulted roof, in which eight columns form a kind of ambulatory. The choir, with the much revered image of the Scourging of Christ on the altar, is narrow and elongated, and is also surrounded by an ambulatory. The sumptuous stucco ornament and ceiling paintings were the work of Johann Baptist Zimmermann, the architect's brother. Dominikus Zimmermann himself spent the last years of his life in the nearby inn run by his son.