Elite

Window shop. There are many...

by will-care

Window shop. There are many trendy shops with fashionable clothes. Funny, even in summer you get the feeling that preparing your wardrobe for winter is very serious business. Narrowly escaping one of the violent hailstorms that seem to occur whenever we visit Europe in summer. We don't see too much hail in Southern California. You can never really pick your weather on a short trip, but we agreed we were lucky to see this City on an 'atmospheric' day. I'm sure its very different in sunshine.

View the cloth museum

by Banty

In St. Gallen was a centre of embroidery and they even specialised it to make finest lace. Even today some noble cloth comes from St. Gallen and they produce machines for the production of lace and embroidery.

There is a textile museum about the history of cloth and lace in St. Gallen. The exhibition is well done, a nice mixture of multimedia presentation and historical things.

It costs 5 sFr entry fee and is opened Mo - Sa, 10:00 am - 12:00 pm and 2:00 pm - 5:00 pm.

The Stiftsbibliothek Frescoes

by amsterdam_vallon

Designed by the same Peter Thumb who worked on the cathedral, the library dates from slightly later, so its orthodox Baroque architecture is overlaid with the opulent decoration of the Rococo period which then held sway. The four ceiling frescoes by Josef Wannenmacher depict with bold trompe l’oeil perspectives the early Christian theological councils of Nicaea, Constantinople, Ephesus and Chalcedon. Amongst the wealth of smaller frescoes set amongst the ceiling stucco, in the far southeast corner you’ll spot The Venerable Bede, a seventh-century English monk from Northumbria who wrote one of the first histories of England: he is shown as a scholar, with, beside him, a magic number square. This four-by-four sequence, where the numbers add up to 34 horizontally, vertically, diagonally and from the four corners, is thought to have been invented by Pythagoras in ancient Greece, but took on a new mystical power for early Christians who understood Christ to have died at 34 years of age.

Saint Gall

by morgesorbe

"Saint Gall la magnifique"

Magnifique ville complètement à l'est de la Suisse, elle se situe proche du lac de constance! Elle se situe e une altitude d'environ 700m. Les rues y sont pittoresques, le shopping y a toute sa place, de nombreux bâtiments d'époque, la fameuse bibliothèque le cloître tant de lieux à voir!

"Son climat...original"

Il y pleut souvent, les nuages sont de la parties allez un jour sur deux! La neige y fait des dégâts violents en hiver...frileux s'abstenir! L'été y est doux. Les trois piscines naturelles situées en amont de la ville sauront vous rafraichir agréablement, un lieu de détente agréable et qui offre une jolie vue sur la cité!

Schnorf's new St.Gallen Page

by Schnorf

The main urban centre of eastern Switzerland, ST GALLEN is a relaxed and conservative provincial city set amidst rolling countryside between the Appenzell hills to the south and the Bodensee to the north. It’s a gentle place, with a busy modern centre and a beautiful Old Town, and is worth a night or two on a journey through the region. The city’s centrepiece is an extraordinarily lavish Baroque abbey: the cathedral is impressive enough by itself, but the abbey library is celebrated as Switzerland’s finest secular Rococo interior and contains a world-class collection of ancient books and manuscripts.

Arrival, orientation and information
St Gallen’s train station is 200m southwest of the Old Town, with the tourist office opposite at Bahnhofplatz 1a, on the far side of the square as you emerge (Mon–Fri 9am–noon & 1–6pm, Sat 9am–noon; 071/227 37 37, www.stgallen-i.ch). As well as providing maps and guidance for the city, staff can supply information on the whole Ostschweiz region. In their Tourist Information booklet you’ll find various discount vouchers for, amongst other things, the Appenzeller Volkskunde Museum in Stein, and the Säntis cable-car. The two-hour guided city walking tour starts from the tourist office, and takes in the Textilmuseum, cathedral, abbey library and bits of the Old Town (June–Sept Mon, Wed & Fri 2.30pm; Fr.15).

St Gallen is a stop on the summer rock-festival circuit, with the Open Air festival taking place over the last weekend in June and pulling in a varied range of musical attractions – 1999 attendees included Van Morrison, Blondie, the Asian Dub Foundation and Metallica. Information and tickets can be had from the tourist office, or from a dedicated hotline (071/222 21 21, www.openairsg.ch).