Abbey Library of St. Gallen

Founded around 719 by the Irish monk Othmar over the hermitage of Saint Gall, the Abbey of St. Gallen became one of the great centres of learning in medieval Europe, its scriptorium copying and preserving classical and Christian texts. The dazzling Rococo library hall, completed in 1767, holds some 160,000 volumes, including around 2,100 manuscripts—some over 1,200 years old—and the famous ninth-century Plan of St. Gall, the only surviving architectural drawing from the early Middle Ages. Above its doorway a Greek inscription reads 'psyches iatreion'—'sanatorium of the soul.'