St. Gallen

St. Gallen is in the north-east, an hour from Zurich, and it has one thing that would justify a much longer journey.

The abbey library

The Stiftsbibliothek is the oldest library in Switzerland and one of the most beautiful rooms anywhere: a rococo hall of 1767, all inlaid walnut, carved galleries and a painted ceiling, holding around 160,000 volumes including some 2,100 manuscripts, of which several hundred are more than a thousand years old.

Among them is the Plan of St. Gall, a ninth-century architectural drawing of an ideal monastery — the oldest surviving building plan in Europe, and the only one from the Carolingian period.

You put on felt overshoes to walk on the parquet. Photography is not allowed inside, which is why the room is worth seeing rather than looking up.

The abbey precinct, including the baroque cathedral next door, is a UNESCO World Heritage site. The monastery was founded around the hermitage of an Irish monk, Gallus, in the seventh century, and for three hundred years it was one of the principal centres of learning in Europe.

The embroidery city

The other half of St. Gallen’s story. From the nineteenth century the town dominated the world trade in machine embroidery and lace — at its height around 1910 it accounted for a fifth of Swiss exports, and the wealth built the ornate merchant houses in the centre.

The trade collapsed after the First World War and has never returned at that scale, but St. Gallen textiles are still used by Paris and Milan couture houses. The Textilmuseum holds the archive and is far more interesting than the subject sounds.

The oriels

The old town has around 110 painted and carved oriel windows — projecting bay windows on the merchant houses, each one a display of what the owner could afford. The most famous is the Pfalzkeller camel oriel on Gallusstrasse.

The red square

The Stadtlounge — a public space in the banking district covered entirely in red rubber: the ground, the benches, the tables, a car, all poured in the same soft red surface, designed by Pipilotti Rist and Carlos Martinez in 2005.

It is either delightful or absurd, and it is certainly unlike anything else in Switzerland.

Getting there

• By train — Zurich about an hour, direct and frequent. Winterthur 35 minutes.
• On foot — the abbey and old town are five minutes from the station.

Nearby

• Appenzell — half an hour by narrow-gauge railway, and the most traditional canton in Switzerland; see the ten most beautiful towns
• Säntis — the mountain that dominates the region, 2,502 m, with a cable car and a view claimed to reach six countries
• Lake Constance — twenty minutes down to Rorschach, and boats from there
• Appenzeller Schaukäserei at Stein — see cheese dairies

When to go

Any time — the library is indoors and open all year, though it closes for a fortnight in November for the annual inventory. Check before travelling specifically for it.

The Olma, the Swiss agricultural fair, fills the town for ten days in October and is a genuine spectacle, including a race in which people run alongside pigs.