St. Gallen Cathedral

About

The Stiftskirche St. Gallus und Otmar, the Collegiate Church of Saints Gall and Otmar, rises in the historic centre of St. Gallen in northeastern Switzerland. Once the principal church of the Abbey of St. Gall, the building has served since 1847 as the cathedral of the diocese and is regarded as one of the last great Baroque sanctuaries of Europe.

According to long tradition, the wandering Irish monk Saint Gall built his hermitage upon this spot in 612 and was buried there around 650. His disciples remained beside the cell, following the rule of Saint Columban, until Saint Otmar enlarged the small hermitage into the great Abbey of St. Gall in 719.

The present cathedral was begun in 1755 under Prince-abbot Cölestin Gugger von Staudach and completed in 1767, designed by Peter Thumb of the Auer Zunft, who also planned the celebrated Abbey Library nearby. Within, frescoes by Josef Wannenmacher cover the vaults, and Switzerland's most complete set of historic church bells hangs in the twin towers, including a small bell said to have been carried from Ireland by Saint Gall himself.

The abbey was dissolved by the canton in 1805, after which the church served as a parish before being elevated to a cathedral in 1847. A careful interior restoration between 1962 and 1967 returned the sanctuary to its original Baroque appearance, and the entire complex was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List.

History

Saint Gall's hermitage gave rise after his death to a community that grew through the seventh century, was formed into a Benedictine abbey by Saint Otmar in 719, and rose by the ninth century into one of the great centres of learning in Latin Christendom, producing manuscripts, music and architectural plans whose influence reached across Europe. The crypt beneath the high altar, raised between 837 and 839, still holds the tomb of Saint Gall, and the western crypt of Saint Otmar receives the bishops of the diocese. After centuries of building and rebuilding the church took its present Baroque shape between 1755 and 1767, and the dissolution of the abbey in 1805 transferred the structure into diocesan use.

Significance

The Cathedral of St. Gallen is venerated as the resting place of Saint Gall, the wandering Irish monk who carried Christian monasticism into Alemannic lands, and of Saint Otmar, who shaped that legacy into a Benedictine abbey of European stature. Its UNESCO designation reflects its place within a monastic landscape that gave Western culture some of its finest manuscripts and one of the most beautiful libraries in the world.