Maria Trens

The place Trens - located at an altitude of 987 m - today belongs to the municipality of Freienfeld. Trens was first mentioned in a document in 827. At that time it was called Torrentes, later Terentes or Trenses. It is likely that there was already a church at that time, but when it was actually built is hidden in the darkness of history. Legends only tell of the origin of the pilgrimage tradition.

According to these, a farmer once found an intact statue of the Virgin Mary under the rubble of a massive landslide. He brought the statue to his house, but the next morning it had disappeared. Only after a long search was it found in the chapel next to the parish church. This "miracle" spread quickly, and numerous believers came to see and worship this image of Mary. Thus, the pilgrimage to Maria Trens was born.

At the place where the farmer is said to have found the statue of the Virgin Mary, there is still the so-called Discovery Chapel today. In 1345, the Pope in Avignon granted an indulgence for the construction of a Marian church. By around 1450, the pilgrimage in Trens was already in full bloom. Reports of miraculous answers to prayers brought more and more pilgrims from afar to the Eisack Valley. The income for the parish was so high that the church could be expanded with a choir in 1489. In 1727, a chapel of grace was built next to the church, into which the famous image of grace - a figure of the Virgin Mary created around 1470 by a local woodcarver - was transferred.

The parish church of Maria Trens underwent a fundamental transformation in the late Baroque style in 1753 and 1754. The paintings are by the painter Joseph Adam Mölckh, who also worked in many other places in Tyrol, such as the city parish church of Hall in Tyrol.

Maria Trens is today the second most important place of pilgrimage in South Tyrol after Maria Weißenstein near Bolzano and is still visited by thousands of pilgrims every year. Already in 1646, a pilgrimage path with the stations of the Rosary was laid out from Sprechenstein to Maria Trens. This pilgrimage path was destroyed in bombardments during the Second World War, and only in the year 2000 could a new pilgrimage path be established. The new pilgrimage path has a total of 15 stations, with the final point being the image of grace of Maria Trens.