Pestkapelle

The Pestkapelle on the outskirts of Sonthofen in the Allgäu is a small baroque votive chapel most likely built in the 17th century to commemorate victims of a plague epidemic — a widespread practice in southern Germany and Austria through which surviving communities expressed gratitude or sought divine intercession. Such chapels were typically sited at the edge of a settlement, as plague burial grounds were kept away from inhabited areas for quarantine reasons. Listed as a protected historic monument in Bavaria, it stands today as a quiet memorial to the devastating waves of disease that repeatedly struck the Allgäu region across the 1600s.