Group tours

With its incredibly beautiful Baroque hall and unique collection of manuscripts, the Abbey Library of St Gall is one of the most important historical libraries in the world. Here at St Gall, a coherent collection of manuscripts of outstanding quality has been preserved for over a thousand years at its place of origin. These precious documents exemplify the development of European culture since the beginning of the Middle Ages.

Temporary exhibitions of manuscripts in the Baroque hall showcase this UNESCO Memory of the World documentary heritage. Each exhibition has a theme dealing with a particular aspect of the history of the Abbey of St Gall.

In January 2019 the permanent exhibition Gallus and his Abbey was opened in the Vaulted Cellar of the Abbey Library. Original manuscripts and artefacts illustrate 1,400 years of cultural history from the original hermit’s cell built by Gallus to the UNESCO World Heritage Site. One of the highlights of the exhibition is certainly the Evangelium Longum. The magnificent binding of this book was created around 895 by the St Gall monk and artist Tuotilo.

In the Exhibition Space the exhibition The Miracle of Transmission – The Plan of St Gall and Europe in the Early Middle Ages can be seen. Fraternity Books and the Book of Vows from the Abbey Archives provide insights into the early medieval world.

In a separate room the famous St Gall Abbey Plan is given pride of place. This plan is considered to be the most important architectural drawing of the Middle Ages.

The Cathedral of St.Gallen is both the parish church for the Cathedral Parish and the diocesan church for the Diocese of St.Gallen founded in 1847. It stands on the spot where the Irish itinerant monk Gall built his hermitage in the year 612. The Cathedral and the baroque Abbey complex were constructed in the middle of the 18th century. In 1805 the newly founded Canton of St.Gallen dissolved the abbey and transferred the administration of Church properties to the Catholic Denomination Within the Canton of St.Gallen. Together the Cathedral and the Abbey complex, notably with the Abbey Library and Abbey Archives, constitute the core of the UNESCO World Heritage site.