The Chapel of St. Roch (Rochuskapelle) is a German pilgrimage chapel, dedicated to Saint Roch, located on the Rochusberg southeast of Bingen am Rhein.
The first building, dating to the plague year of 1666, was destroyed during the campaigns of 1795 in the French Revolutionary Wars of the Rhine valley. The second was built 1814 in the wake of a typhoid fever epidemic brought by soldiers returning from the Battle of Leipzig of the Napoleonic Wars. Goethe wrote a description of its dedication ceremony. This building's flèche was hit by lightning in 1889 and the chapel burned down to the brickwork.
The present building, built in 1893–95, has Neo Gothic designs by the Freiburg master builder Max Meckel and the Berlin stonecutters, Zeidler & Wimmel. At this time a small Bethlehem Chapel was built under the main chapel's east window, recalling an earlier chapel of that name on the site from the Crusader era.
Parts of the earlier Roch chapels' art collections survive, but the only thing to survive the 1889 fire was the Baroque statue of the patron saint at the high altar.
References:Sigmaringen Castle was first mentioned in the year 1077 in the chronicles of Petershausen monastery. The oldest parts of the castle are concealed beneath the alterations made during the 17th and the 19th centuries. The secret of the earliest settlement built on this defendable rock will never be fully revealed: large-scale excavation work would be necessary, which the extensive land development renders impossible. Judging from the many Roman remains unearthed in the area around Sigmaringen, the 12th century keep known as the 'Roman Tower' could be traced back to a Roman predecessor.
The castle remains that have been preserved (gate, great hall and keep) date back to the Staufer period around 1200. The castle remains were integrated into subsequent buildings. The foundations of the castle buildings are to a large extent identical to the surrounding castle wall.
These remains give us a good idea of how the castle might have looked during the 12th century.