Nestled between Lake Constance and Appenzellerland, this compact city in Eastern Switzerland boasts a charming, car-free old town. The city is famous for its colourful oriel windows. The Abbey District with its cathedral and library is a UNESCO World Heritage site. 

Irish itinerant monk Gallus has travelled from Arbon on Lake Constance to the place where St Gallen lies today to live as a hermit. Before long, his hermitage expanded to become a monastery and, over the years to come, the city of St Gallen sprang up around the monastic site.

Without Gallus, the monastery and the city of St Gallen would never have come into existence. The Benedictine monastery closed in 1805, but the spirit of the Benedictine monks can still be felt all around the city today. In 1983, the St Gallen Abbey District was declared a UNESCO World Heritage site in recognition of its monastic and cultural history extending back well over a thousand years. The city’s collection of testimonies and documents dating from the early Middle Ages is one of the most significant in the whole of Europe. 

Where once Benedictine monks were quietly at work, Cornel Dora is now one of the key members of staff.   Born in St Gallen, the doctor of history has been a librarian at the St Gallen Abbey Library since 2013. Cornel Dora is convinced he has the best job in the world. And with some justification too.

At the heart of the UNESCO World Heritage site is the St Gallen Abbey Library which, with its baroque hall, is regarded as one of the most magnificent and beautiful libraries in the world. It is home to a cultural treasure like no other: The “apothecary for the soul” comprises no fewer than 170,000 books and 2,000 original manuscripts from the Middle Ages. 

Since 2019, Cornel Dora has been able to wax lyrical about two new attractions in the Abbey District. The Abbey Library’s vaulted cellar has been fitted out with modern technology and transformed into an interactive exhibition space. The exhibition takes visitors on a journey through the last 1,400 years of European cultural history. Monasteries such as the one in St Gallen played a key role in the development of this cultural heritage, from writing and language through to music, architecture, art and spirituality. 

But that is not all: A new exhibition space also showcases treasures from the St Gallen Abbey Archive, the city’s second important collection alongside the library. This exhibition focuses on early mediaeval documents, maps and deeds relating to St Gallen. It is the most important collection of its type north of the Alps. 

The true highlight of the exhibition has a separate room of its own: the famous St Gallen Abbey Library monastery plan dates from the year 825 and is regarded as the most important architectural drawing from the European Middle Ages. Visitors are only permitted to view the valuable document for a few seconds to protect it from excessive exposure to light. Although the original plan was never implemented in its entirety, the planned basic grid can be seen today in archaeological excavations, and the floor plan of the cathedral corresponds to the grid mapped out over 1,000 years ago on the plan. 

The cornerstone of much of St Gallen’s cultural heritage was laid over 1,000 years ago. This heritage includes urban development, art, science – and also the city’s beer culture. 

The three oldest documented breweries are even shown on the monastery plan. The St Gallen Abbey Archive boasts the oldest document north of the Alps. This written deed records the use of beer as an interest payment. And the St Gallen Schützengarten brewery, which produces the famous St Gallen beer, was founded back in 1779, making it the oldest brewery in Switzerland.