St Gallen grew around a hermitage founded by an Irish monk in the early seventh century and the abbey that followed became one of the great centres of learning in medieval Europe. The Stiftsbibliothek, rebuilt in the 1760s in rococo, holds around 160,000 volumes including roughly 2,100 manuscripts, some from the eighth and ninth centuries, and the Plan of St Gall, the only surviving architectural drawing from the entire early middle ages. The abbey precinct is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
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The city's other history is textiles. St Gallen embroidery dominated the world market before the First World War and still supplies couture houses in Paris and Milan, which is why there is a serious textile museum here. Pack for a damp eastern Swiss climate, for a library with its own rules, and for the hills that start at the edge of town.
What Makes St Gallen Different to Pack For
The library requires overshoes
You put on large felt slippers over your shoes at the door, partly to protect the inlaid wooden floor and partly because it is a working research library rather than a museum. Photography is prohibited. Bags go in lockers.
Practically this means shoes you can slide the felt over, so not a wide boot, and it means going in with hands free.
A cool, wet, elevated city
St Gallen sits at around 670 metres and is one of the wetter and cooler Swiss cities, with around 1,300 millimetres of rain a year and a reputation locally for fog and drizzle. Summer runs 13°C to 24°C, winter minus 3°C to 4°C with snow.
A merino wool base layer for women covers October through April and the library and cathedral interiors, which are cold.
The city is on a slope and the hills begin at once
The centre is in a valley and the ground rises steeply on both sides, reached by three small funiculars and a rack railway. The Three Weieren, artificial ponds built for the textile industry, sit on the hillside above the city and are where St Gallen swims in summer.
Recommended Tours and Experiences
The St Gallen Packing List
Footwear
Flat, grippy and not too wide, for the felt overshoes and for wet cobbles. The city ices in winter on the steeper lanes. For the Three Weieren, the Freudenberg ridge or anything in Appenzell next door, waterproof hiking shoes are the right tool, since the paths are mud and root much of the year.
Clothing
Layers and a properly waterproof outer. This is a city where it rains and drizzles a great deal and where a light jacket is inadequate for most of the year. Covered shoulders and knees for the cathedral.
St Gallen is a university city with a well regarded business school, so the centre is busier and younger in the evening than the size suggests.
For the library
A small bag, since larger ones go in lockers. Shoes the felt slippers will fit over. Glasses if you want to read the manuscript labels, which are small and the light is deliberately low.
For the weather
A packable rain jacket at minimum and something more substantial in winter. An umbrella works in the pedestrianised centre.
Practical
Cash alongside cards. A guest card if your hotel offers one. St Gallen is the gateway to Appenzell and the Alpstein, twenty minutes away by train, so if the mountains are part of the plan pack for them separately.
What to Wear at Key Sites
The Stiftsbibliothek
A single rococo hall of carved walnut and cherry, stucco and ceiling frescoes, with an Egyptian mummy at one end because an eighteenth century abbot thought it would be interesting. The Plan of St Gall and the earliest manuscripts are shown in rotation in an adjoining vault.
Practically: felt overshoes at the door, no photography, no large bags, and it closes over lunch and on some Mondays. Cold. It is one room and it takes half an hour, and it is worth crossing Switzerland for.
The cathedral and the abbey precinct
A late baroque cathedral of the 1760s with a green and white interior and ceiling frescoes by Josef Wannenmacher, sharing the precinct with the library and the former abbey buildings, now cantonal offices.
Practically: free, cold, and covered shoulders and knees. The precinct is flat and open.
The old town and the Erker
The pedestrianised centre has around 111 oriel windows, many carved and painted, on merchant houses built with textile money. The Textilmuseum covers the embroidery industry and holds lace and pattern books going back centuries.
Practically: flat and compact. The Stadtlounge, a public square surfaced entirely in red rubber with furniture moulded into it, is either delightful or absurd depending on your view, and is worth ten minutes either way.
The Three Weieren
Three ponds on the hillside above the city, built to supply the bleaching works, now the city's swimming spot, with wooden bathhouses from the early twentieth century and a view over the Lake Constance basin.
Practically: reached by the Muhleggbahn funicular or a twenty minute climb. The water is unheated and genuinely cold. The bathhouses have set hours and some are segregated at certain times.
The embroidery, and why it matters here
Before 1914, St Gallen embroidery accounted for something close to a fifth of all Swiss exports and the canton was among the richest places in Europe. The industry collapsed after the First World War and again in the depression, and the city has been quietly rebuilding ever since around a much smaller, much higher end trade: the lace on a Paris couture gown is still likely to have been made within twenty kilometres of here.
The Textilmuseum on Vadianstrasse holds the pattern archive, tens of thousands of samples going back to the fifteenth century, and it is used as a working reference by designers rather than being purely historical.
Practically: the museum is small, indoors and warm, which makes it the right call on a wet afternoon, and it is far more interesting than the subject sounds. The oriel windows on the merchant houses in the old town were paid for by this trade, so the museum and the street are the same story.
Appenzell and Lake Constance
The Alpstein range and Appenzell village are twenty to forty minutes south by train. Rorschach on Lake Constance is fifteen minutes north, with boats to Germany and Austria.
What Not to Bring
Leave a wide boot for the library slippers. Leave a large bag for the same reason. Leave the camera expectations inside the library.
Leave a showerproof jacket in a city this wet, and leave the assumption that eastern Switzerland is as sunny as the posters suggest.
Essential Resources for Women in St Gallen
Emergency numbers in Switzerland: 112 is the European emergency number. Police 117, ambulance 144, fire 118. Rega, on 1414, covers air rescue and is the number if you are walking in the Alpstein.
Tourist support: Switzerland has no separate tourist police. The St Gallen cantonal police take reports from visitors and English is widely spoken. A stolen passport needs a police report before the consulate can issue a replacement.
US Embassy and consulate: the embassy is in Bern at Sulgeneckstrasse 19, telephone +41 31 357 7011, at ch.usembassy.gov, around two and a half hours away by train. Enrol in the Smart Traveler Enrollment Program at step.state.gov before you travel.
Main hospital or clinic: the Kantonsspital St Gallen is a large teaching hospital with a 24 hour emergency department and a trauma centre, and it is the receiving hospital for mountain casualties from the Alpstein. Swiss healthcare is excellent and expensive, so travel insurance is necessary, and if you are walking in the mountains it should cover alpine rescue.
Official health authority: the Swiss Federal Office of Public Health at bag.admin.ch.
US State Department travel advisory for Switzerland: current advisory level and detail. Read it directly rather than relying on this page.
UK FCDO travel advice for Switzerland: entry requirements, safety and health guidance.
Official tourism authority: Switzerland Tourism at myswitzerland.com, with the St Gallen Bodensee board at st.gallen-bodensee.ch for library opening hours, which are limited and close over lunch, and the funicular timetables.
Solo women safety assessment: St Gallen is very safe for a woman travelling alone. Swiss crime is low, the city is mid sized and orderly, the centre is pedestrianised and busy with students in the evening, public transport runs late and reliably, and eating alone is unremarkable. Violent crime against visitors is essentially unknown and harassment is rare. Petty theft is limited and concentrated around the station, which is the one area that feels less pleasant late at night and is easily avoided by taking a bus or taxi. The city is quiet on Sundays, when almost everything closes, which is worth planning around rather than discovering. The practical hazards are weather related: it rains a great deal, the steeper lanes and the paths up to the Weieren are slippery in wet and icy in winter, and falls are the commonest minor injury. The ponds are unheated and genuinely cold even in August, so treat swimming there as cold water swimming rather than a dip; cold shock is a real phenomenon and there is no lifeguard at all of them. If you are heading into the Alpstein, which is the main reason many people base themselves here, that range is serious mountain terrain with exposure and fast changing weather, covered in the Appenzell guide.
Reading On
St Gallen holds one of the great rooms in Europe and is the obvious base for the Alpstein, which is twenty minutes away. The Switzerland travel guide for women is the parent for the whole country and covers the regions, the seasons and the rail passes, and the Switzerland packing list for women covers a multi region trip. South, the Appenzell packing list for women covers the mountains and the most traditional canton, and the Chur packing list for women and Davos packing list for women reach Graubunden. West, the Zurich travel guide for women is an hour away, with the Schaffhausen packing list for women and the Basel packing list for women along the Rhine beyond it. The travel packing guide for women is the parent for all destinations. For why merino suits a city that is cold, damp and frequently drizzling, the best merino wool base layers for women explains the fibre, and the Roman Trail collection is where the tops themselves live.
If the outer journey is calling you, the inner one usually is too. Explore SoulMap at romantrail.com/blogs/soulmap.
