St Gallen - Benedictine Abbey

The Benedictine Abbey Library contains some 130,000 volumes, 1,650 incunabula and 2,000 manuscripts. It is housed in a charming Roccoco Library Hall by Peter Thumb (1758-67), with stucco work by the Gigi brothers and ceiling- paintings by Josef Wannenmacher, possesses works which belonged to the old abbey school, one of the leading European capitals of learning in the ninth-11th C., notable particularly in the fields of book illumination, poetry and the translation of Latin works into Alemannic. The finest items in the library are displayed in rotation and include the ninth century "Psalterium Aureum", the "Casus Monasterii Sancti Galli" by Ekkehard IV (11th C.) and Manuscript of the Nibelungenlied (13th C.). The famous plan of St Gallen abbey in 820, displayed under glass, presents the model of a large monastic establishment, a plan which was followed until the end of the Middle Ages. A double sarcophagus of sycamore wood contains a mummy from Upper Egypt (700 B.C.).