Wolfstein, Rhineland-Palatinate
Wolfstein was founded in 1275 on Habsburg King Rudolph I's orders, which called for a “fortified and free” town near his castle, “Woluisstein”, now known as the "Alt-Wolfstein" (“Old Wolfstein”) ruin. Rudolph forthwith granted the new town the same town rights and freedoms as the town of Speyer. As an “everlasting marketplace”, it was to be a sanctuary for commerce, trade and dealing. The first townsmen and -women came from the surrounding, much older villages.
Mariastein, Tyrol
Mariastein is the smallest municipality in the Kufstein district in the Austrian state of Tyrol located 4 kilometers north of Wörgl and 11.5 kilometers southwest of Kufstein. Already a fifteenth century pilgrimage destination, it became more so after a local statue of Mary, which had been removed to Bavaria in the late seventeenth century was said to have returned to the church in Mariastein on its own. At the center of the community is a 42-metre-tall "Wohnturm", a castle built in the fourteenth century atop a rock outcropping, and which contains 150 stairs. It is now a museum.