The Abbey Library — the world's most beautiful Baroque library
St. Gallen is an eastern Swiss city known above all for its extraordinary Abbey of Saint Gall — a UNESCO World Heritage Site whose Baroque library is consistently described as the world's most beautiful: a double-gallery hall of 18th-century exuberance housing 170,000 volumes including illuminated manuscripts dating to the 8th century. The city grew around the abbey founded by the Irish monk Gallus in 612 CE and was historically one of the most important centres of learning in the early medieval world. Today it's also famous for its lace and embroidery industry, with a fine textiles museum.
The Irish peregrinus Gallus settled as a hermit here in 612 CE; his disciple Otmar founded the Benedictine Abbey of Saint Gall in 719 CE. By the 9th century, the abbey's scriptorium was producing some of the finest illuminated manuscripts in Christendom and its school educated scholars from across Europe. The abbey's 'Plan of Saint Gall' (c. 820 CE) is the oldest surviving architectural plan in the Western world. The city became an independent imperial city in 1405 and joined the Swiss Confederation in 1454. The lace industry that made it wealthy in the 19th century is still celebrated at the…