The pilgrimage church of Unser Frau

The pilgrimage church of Unser Frau

Like a cathedral in the mountains

The history of the pilgrimage church of Madonna di Senales/Unser Frau in the eponymous village reaches far back into the past. In 1304, a small 13 cm wooden statue of the Virgin Mary was found here. This was at the same spot where the Marian pilgrimage church is situated today - a church that originally evolved from a simple, Gothic chapel and was later renovated in the Baroque style. The Marian statue is still kept at the pilgrimage church and is now stored in the church monstrance. The church is a monument to a statue. All of 1,500 m above sea level, the pilgrimage village of Unser Frau was a stop-over for centuries for people coming from Augsburg using the Alpine crossing.
The staircase leads up to the church. Not up to the heavens, no, but then again, almost. It leads to the local cemetery, to bronze and golden burial crosses. To the monument to those who served and died, to the life-sized cross, to the cemetery chapel built in 1707 and to the bronze relief by the sculptor, Friedrich Gurschler.