St Gallen Cathedral and Abbey Church, Switzerland

East end exterior by JM Beer built 1760-4

 It is the stupendous Baroque library of St Gallen which draws people here today, but the Benedictine Abbey was established in 747 and its heyday was from the 9th to the 11th centuries. The Romanesque conventual buildings are long gone and instead we have the Baroque splendour of Peter Thumb and others, completed in 1767.The library was Thumb's last major work and filled the last years of his life up to his retirement in 1758. 

The planning history of the  Baroque church is complex.Plans were submitted from 1720 by various architects including Peter Thumb (1681-1766), Caspar Moosbrugger (1656-1723) , Johann Michael Beer I (1696-1780)  J.C. Bagnato (1696-1757) and Johann Michael Beer II (1700-1767).The Chapter at St Gallen decided to keep the existing eastern church as the choir and demolish the western part and creating a new nave.With the demolition of the western church the commission to build the present nave and domed area began in 1755. With stucco and fresco work by Christian Wenzinger.  consecration was in 1760. By then Peter Thumb had retired and when the Chapter changed its mind  and decided to rebuild the east end of the Church, they turned to J.M. Beer I. In December 1760 he provided a plan with  two towers and shallow apse. By 1764 this new choir with towers was built  including stucco work by J.G.and M. Gigl. Reading the building history in Henry-Russell Hitchcock's 'Rococo architecture in Southern Germany'(1968), bought in 1979 I begin to understand the significance of this building. It was the end of a long sequence of attempts at a church with central oval domed area and nave and choir extending almost equally either side. Hitchcock draws comparison with Wren's St Paul's Cathedral in London where the domed area is so dominant even though the choir and nave are both particularly lengthy. 

The interior of the central dome today 

The little video below, of the church outside and inside, is a must ! Make it full screen. It's  as though  you were there!

After the secularisation of the Abbey the church became the Cathedral for the new diocese of St Gallen.There was severe damage to the abbey and church during the the Napoleonic Wars 1798-1803.  Baroque altars were repositioned, and the high altar redesigned by 1810. By 1815 the Baroque western chancel had been replaced by a neo-classical gallery and organ.The interior of the dome had to be repaired causing the loss of the original paintings on the vault, only partially  restored in the 1960s. A  neo Baroque liturgical centre was erected in the 1960s taking up a substantial part of the rotunda. Finally a competition was held in 2008 to redesign the liturgical centre. Caruso St John of London won. I cannot comment without seeing it in person! 

This excellent World Heritage video introduces the history of the Abbey.

The Abbey was famous as a centre of learning with a scriptorium from the mid 8th century. The plan of St Gall from about 820 is the earliest architectural drawing of a monastic complex (see above video). The interior of the Library is a superb example of late Rococo, the work of Peter Thumb, done in his absence 1758-68. Ceiling paintings by Joseph Wannanmacher (1722-80), stucco by the Giglis and cabinet work and marquetry floor by  Gabriel Loser (1701-1785). After the secularisation we are fortunate that it survived to become a scientific lending library and study centre. It is not simply a museum even today. With about 170,000 volumes and 2100 manuscripts, from 8th to 15th centuries. There are beautiful written and illustrated Irish, Carolingian, Ottonian manuscripts  and also examples from the Renaissance. I do not remember the church on my group visit in the 1970s  but the library was astounding even though I did not understand its importance as a collection or its  Rococo magnificence.