St Gallen Attractions

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.