Libraries to visit St Gall

The portal of the hall bears the inscription Psyches latreion (Pharmacy of the Soul), borrowed from the library of Ramses II. The library was built between 1758 and 1767 and is the finest secular Baroque building in the country. The architecture of the room, by Peter Thumb, is baroque and the decoration rococo. The ceiling paintings are by Joseph Wannenmacher and represent the four councils. Under each of these frescoes, the parquet floor, also superb, is decorated with a star. The columns are surmounted by cherubs in different outfits, which were used to indicate the different categories of works by speciality, before the alphabetical classification. Three of the columns are movable and reveal the list of works that were contained in the related display cases. Beyond the beauty of the "packaging", the library, which is not a simple museum, is above all a treasure trove for medievalists, with an impressive collection of original manuscripts. Some of them are on display in the main hall in an exhibition that is renewed every year; the rest are carefully preserved on the floors. In total, the library holds more than 160,000 works. A model of the abbey church, a plan of the former abbey and a gift brought back from France by the mayor when the canton of St. Gallen was founded are on display in a corner of the library: a mummy inherited from Napoleon's campaigns in Egypt. As the mayor did not want it in her home, the mummy is kept in the library with the sarcophagus.