Wallfahrtskirche Maria Hilf in Freystadt, Catholic pilgrimage church in Freystadt, Germany

Wallfahrtskirche Maria Hilf is a baroque central building of light tan ashlar blocks on a flat meadow north of Freystadt. Its broad facade has a rounded pedimented bay with a round window and an arched wooden door; above rises a tall arched window. A green copper dome on a windowed drum, topped by a lantern with a golden cross, is flanked by two shorter square towers with green caps.

Two shepherd boys, Hans Popp and Hans Steinmetz, built a wooden and clay chapel on the Rosswiese at the end of the Thirty Years' War, housing a Marian image given by Sarah Frank. A stone chapel followed, consecrated in 1670. From 1700 to 1710, Giovanni Antonio Viscardi designed the present central building for Count Ferdinand Lorenz Franz Xaver von Tilly; Bishop Johann Adam Nieberlein consecrated it on 3 August 1710.

The church is a pilgrimage site dedicated to Maria Hilf, a devotion that began with a wooden chapel built by the shepherd boys Hans Popp and Hans Steinmetz on the Rosswiese. The carved grace image they venerated was replaced in the stone chapel consecrated in 1670. The Franciscans, who returned in 1835, served the pilgrimage; the high altar dates from the 1950s.

The church and former monastery stand together on a flat meadow north of Freystadt's old town, reached by a short walk from the town centre. The main entrance is the arched wooden door in the central façade bay. The interior is in use for pilgrimage services, so visitors should time a look at the dome, stucco and Asam frescoes around them.

The design of this domed central building is counted among the models for the Dresden Frauenkirche. The church also survived only because Baron von Griesenbeck intervened against its demolition in 1802, having found the grave of one of his ancestors inside. The high altar dates from the 1950s.