St. Gallen

According to legend the Irish missionary Gallus settled as a hermit by the river Steinach in 612, and around 719 Saint Othmar founded a monastery on the spot. The abbey became one of the great centres of learning in early medieval Europe: under Abbot Waldo of Reichenau manuscripts were copied and a famous library gathered, and in the 9th century a larger church was built and the library expanded. Because Gallus chose a boggy valley for solitude rather than a city site, buildings on the valley floor still have to stand on piles.

The town that grew around the abbey fought for its own freedom. Its citizens joined the Swiss Confederation as full members in 1454 and became completely free of the abbot in 1457. After the Reformation the city was Protestant while the abbey remained a Catholic stronghold in its midst until 1803.

St. Gallen became known for fine textiles, and in the 19th century the first embroidery machines were developed here. By 1910 embroidery was Switzerland's largest export, 18 per cent of the country's export value, and more than half of the world's embroidery came from St. Gallen; a fifth of the people of eastern Switzerland worked in textiles. The industry then collapsed and only partly recovered from the 1950s. In 1983 the abbey precinct became a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The abbey shapes the city's identity. Its Rococo library hall, built in 1758–1767, holds 1,650 books printed before 1500 and some 2,100 manuscripts from the 8th to the 15th centuries, including Irish and Carolingian works, and the baroque cathedral beside it is the seat of the Diocese of Saint Gallen.

Textiles remain part of the culture: the Textile Museum shows historical lace and embroidery, and St. Gallen embroidery is still sought by Parisian haute couture designers. The University of St. Gallen, known as HSG, is known for its business school, and its International MBA is recognised as one of Europe's leading programmes. Contemporary design appears too, in the Stadtlounge, a city-centre street laid out as an open-air living room.

The calendar peaks with the OLMA, the national agricultural and food fair each autumn, and the Open Air St. Gallen music festival in the Sitter valley in July. FC St. Gallen plays at the kybunpark, and on summer evenings young people gather at the Drei Weieren ponds above the city.

About 76,000 people lived in the city at the end of 2020, and in 2019 about 31 per cent were foreign nationals. German is the main language, and at the 2000 census Italian and Serbo-Croatian were the next most widely spoken. St. Gallen is the capital of its canton and the main city of eastern Switzerland, lying between Lake Constance and the mountains of the Appenzell Alps.

The economy now rests largely on services and the university, since only a reduced textile industry survived the competition of computer-operated embroidery machines. The station has trains to Zurich every half-hour, making the city well connected for commuters and business.

Daily life runs between the pedestrian old town, the station district and the hills above, where the Drei Weieren ponds are a public swimming place and an evening meeting point. Lake Constance and the Alpstein are close enough for after-work and weekend outings.

The St. Galler Bratwurst is the city's dish. It is a white sausage of veal and pork made with fresh milk, which gives its pale colour, and flavoured with spices such as cardamom, coriander, ginger, nutmeg and lemon. The butchers' guild statutes of 1438 already required it to be made with veal, bacon, spices and fresh milk, and today it is protected by a PGI label. It is also called the Olma Bratwurst, after the autumn fair where it is the staple.

Locals are firm about how it is eaten: in the region it is served with bread only, never with sauce or mustard. Stands around the Marktplatz and across the city sell it with a hard bread roll, and it also appears in sit-down dishes such as rösti with veal sausage and onion sauce.

The city has its own brewery, Schützengarten, whose beers are poured across town and which has a restaurant and a beer bottle museum beside the brewery. The old town lanes hold traditional Swiss restaurants, cafés and bars, and on fine days flea-market stalls appear in the old town streets a short walk from the abbey.