St Gallen lies about 15km/9mi southwest of Lake Constance, in a narrow high valley of the Pre-Alps, here dissected by numerous streams (the Goldach, the Steinach, the Sitter) flowing through constricted gorges. The highway and express trains connect the town with Zurich-Kloten airport and other
important towns in Switzerland. St Gallen is the capital of the canton of the same name and the commercial hub (embroidery, textile and metal industries; largest shopping center in Eastern Switzerland; trade fairs) and cultural center of Eastern Switzerland as well as a popular congress resort.
The town takes its name from the Irish missionary monk Gall or Gallus who established a hermitage here about 612. This developed into the Benedictine abbey which became a flourishing seat of religion and scholarship in the ninth century; its school and library made it one of the focal points of European culture north of the Alps.
In the 10th C. St Gallen, until then no more than a settlement of craftsmen and tradesmen which had grown up around the abbey, achieved the status of a town which in the 15th C. shook off the authority of the abbey and, in 1524, under a burgomaster named Vadian, adopted the Reformed faith.
In the 16th-18th C. the town became exceedingly prosperous through its linen industry and grew considerably in size. The craft of embroidery, introduced in the 18th C., developed about 1830 with the advent of the hand-operated embroidery machine and later the shuttle embroidery machine into a considerable export industry. Other industries, in particular metal-working, were established later.
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