I am walking through the pages of a folk tale. Half-timbered houses in deep hues with wrought-iron signs, narrow winding streets lined with heritage buildings embellished with turrets, carved balconies and bay windows called oriels. The Old Town has 111 oriels — these boxy windows decorated with a riot of motifs and images, project out of the walls. Greek gods, fruits and vines — these windows have images from far and wide, commissioned by the rich traders of this town, who made their money from embroidery and textiles. My guide, Enza Barra, explains that oriels had three functions — “More room, more light, and most importantly, a show of wealth.” The wealthier a merchant, the more ornate was the oriel.
St Gallen, an alpine town in Switzerland, just an hour from Zurich, is full of surprises — its name is derived from the Irish monk Gallus, who founded a hermitage here in 612 AD. Legend has it that Gallus came upon a waterfall, lost his step, fell into a briar patch and hurt his foot. A bear lumbered out of the woods, but when Gallus spoke to it, the creature left him alone. Gallus knew he had found his special spot and the bear is still on the coat of arms of the town. The Abbey of St Gallen, now a UNESCO Heritage site, came into existence around 720 AD, when a priest named Otmar established a monastery to celebrate the work of Gallus. By the 9th century, St Gallen had become a major religious centre.
But there is more to the town than just its monastery. “St Gallen was called the White City, thanks to the metres of linen that used to be spread for miles to bleach and dry in the sun,” explains Barra. From the late Middle Ages till the end of the First World War, St Gallen was known for its high quality linen, which was then replaced by cotton weaving, and finally intricate lace and embroidery.
Famous designers such as Chanel and Armani work with lace from St Gallen, and fashions shows in Paris, Milan and New York use the city’s textiles. The Textile Museum is a good place to get a window into this heritage — from Renaissance gowns and veils to collars and laces.
The city was an early adopter of the Protestant Reformation. Barra narrates humorous anecdotes about the Catholic-Protestant divide of yore and how there was even a dividing wall, nine metres high, separating the two. However with Napoleon’s conquest, the monks had to leave, and the Baroque buildings morphed into government buildings, law courts, and offices.
The town’s Catholic baroque cathedral is a stunner — I am awed by the sea-green malachite stone used with a triple-naved stucco, while angels and cherubs smile down from the clouds. The towering organ pipes soar to the high ceiling, ornately painted with a myriad religious motifs. The wooden confessionals are pieces of art. The Protestant neo-Gothic church, with its mosaic-tiled roof, frescos and star-studded ceiling, resembles a night sky.
The show stopper of the town is the Abbey library — the world’s oldest monastic library. Vadian, a doctor of St Gallen in the 1500s and mayor of the town, bequeathed his extensive book collection to the library. Floors made from more than 30 kinds of wood like cherry, fir and walnut, gleam under my feet encased in the oversized felt slippers that I have been asked to wear. The curved reading room is a baroque masterpiece, with wood-panelled bookshelves flanked by columns, cherubs above each window frame, and handsome stuccos on ceilings.
Sunlight streams into the magnificent room with two levels of bookshelves loaded with more than 1,70,000 biblical and leather-bound books, that have survived calamities, and a gargantuan globe based on a Mercator map, showing the four known continents of 1571. There are medieval manuscripts and old tomes on architecture, botany and medicine. At the entrance is a sign in Greek that reads “medicine for the soul”. The hall was built in 1758 with frescoes done by local artists.
I am awed by the sight of fading parchments under glass — there’s the first example of an architectural plan on parchment, copper plate prints, an old monastery rule in the year 600 that monks should ‘read daily’, a 4th-Century narrative of the Trojan War, and handwritten manuscripts from as early as the 6th Century.
St Gallen is, however, not all time warp. I see the medieval Pfalz underground cellars converted into a swish meeting and seminar space with a spectacular entrance gate, designed by celebrated Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava. It is also famous for the City Lounge, the largest outdoor living room in Switzerland. This project was a work of Swiss artist Pipilotti Rist and architect Carlos Martinez — they covered public squares and streets in this district with red carpets, along with huge pots with plants and strung glowing balls of lights on a line above! Many people read books in this public space or watch performances by local artists.
As I watch the setting sun, sitting here, I muse at the way the past and present fuse seamlessly in St Gallen.
