Boarding School Summer Camp in St. Gallen

Abbey Cathedral of St Gall
The present cathedral building is from after the monastery’s heyday and dates to the middle of the 18th century. It is in the Baroque style, which while understated on the facade is almost overwhelming for its splendour inside. There’s ornate stuccowork everywhere you look; the ceilings are covered with frescoes, there are sculptures on almost every surface and the colour scheme of turquoise and beige resembles few churches in the world.

Abbey Library of St Gall
Constructed around the same time as the abbey cathedral, the library building houses the oldest literature collection in Switzerland, and one of the oldest and richest in the world. It all dates from the 8th-century Carolingian monastery and includes thousands of manuscripts, incunables and early prints. There are 160,000 volumes in all, many hugely significant. The abbey’s architectural richness, combined with the extensive collection of original writings, make the abbey of St.Gallen an exceptional piece of cultural heritage, which has been recognised as such by UNESCO since 1983.

Lapidarium of the Abbey Library
Lots of early medieval stonework came to light when the abbey was excavated in the 1960s. Now, in the bowels of the abbey you can delve into the site’s Early Medieval origins. In these vaults you’ll see a forgotten repository of Carolingian art, in the form of carved capitals and the imposts that would have been above them. The exhibition down here also has a model of the abbey as it would have been in the 9th century. There’s information on the life of the abbey’s patron, the 7th-century Irish monk St Gallus, as well as details about the culture and history of the monastery.

Old Town
St Gallen has a convivial historic core that is easy to navigate as there’s no road traffic. Something that distinguishes the old town are the ornate oriels (bay windows) on the facades of old houses. There are 111 oriels in all to look out for on these streets, many of which are expertly carved and painted and belonged to textile merchants in the 16th and 17th centuries. The best places to find them are on the bustling Marktgasse, Schmiedgasse, Spisergasse and Kugelgasse.

Peter and Paul Wildlife Park
On the hilly northern outskirts of the city is a free animal attraction that stays open all year round and has views to Lake Constance. The park is somewhere to see Alpine animals species as if they were in the wild. So red deer, fallow deer, wild boars, marmots, wild cats, lynxes and Alpine ibexes graze, roam and rest in this upland pre-Alpine setting.

Kunstmuseum St Gallen
The city’s art museum has masterpieces from the Late Middle Ages to the 20th century. The museum’s reserve is massive, and the galleries are only able to hang a fragment of it at any one time as the venue in the Stadtpark has limited space. The good thing about that is that exhibitions are always fresh. In the collection are paintings by Renaissance masters like Albrecht Dürer and Rembrandt, but the lion’s share is from the 19th and 20th centuries. There are works by celebrated Swiss and German artists like Ferdinand Hodler, Paul Klee, Max Liebermann, Carl Spitzweg and Franz von Lenbach. And these are joined by the masters of Impressionism, such as Monet, Sisley and Pissarro, and earlier French painters like Delacroix and Camille Corot.

Textilmuseum
All the way up to the 20th century Eastern Switzerland was a centre of excellence for embroidery. This would be stitched by hand until the Industrial revolution brought machine embroidery and St Gallen’s textile industry went into overdrive.

Naturmuseum St Gallen
St Gallen’s Natural History Museum has been around since 1846 but opened in a striking new building in November 2016. This is a couple of kilometres east of the centre of the city and has arranged the historic trove of specimens in more family-friendly ways.

Stadtlounge
In the west of the city is the Bleicheli, a commercial district where a lot of St Gallen’s historic textile manufacturing took place. The name comes from the German word “bleichen” bleach, as fabrics would be left out in the sun here to bleach. The Stadtlounge is the hangout of choice for uni students, and merits a look in the evening when the orbs above the square are illuminated.

St Laurenzen Kirche
A Swiss “monument of national importance”, the St Laurenzen Kirche is on Marktgasse in the Old Town. There has been a church at this location since the 13th century, and the present building is the fifth in 800 years. It has 15th-century origins and was given a major Neo-Gothic overhaul in the middle of the 19th century.

Botanical Garden
You don’t have to be an expert horticulturalist to appreciate St Gallen’s Botanical Garden. In peaceful, green surroundings close to the Naturmuseum are more than 8,000 plants from across the globe, all methodically labelled. There are two greenhouses, providing habitats for plants from a host of climate zones, teeming with orchids, palms, cactuses and ponds with giant water lilies. Outside, the ponds are is very pretty when the lilies bloom in summer, while one of the strangest specimens is a Chilean rhubarb with huge leaves.

Schützengarten
On Sankt Jakob-Strasse you’ll come across the Schützengarten brewery. Schützengarten has been brewing beer since 1779, making it the oldest brewery in Switzerland. The award-winning brand is widespread across Eastern Switzerland and remains independent, producing a host of beer varieties from an IPA to typical German wheat beer and a schwarzbier.

Drei Weieren
The high ridge forming a boundary against St Gallen’s southern neighbourhoods is a beautiful public recreation area. This is Freudenberg, where you can amble for captivating views of the city, but also swim if the weather’s right in summer. There are five artificial ponds at the highest point.

Lake Constance
Central Europe’s third-largest lake is only 15 minutes by road from St Gallen. Instead of dramatic and intimidating landscapes, the shores of this lake are quiet, low-key and trimmed with small resort towns and farmland. The relatively gentle topography is a dream for cyclists, who can go where they please around the perimeter on the Lake Constance Cycle Path. For something different in summer you could set a course for the Städtische Seebadanstalt in Rorschach. This public bath is in on a pier projecting into the lake. You can swim in the lake and head up to the decking to dry off in the sun.

Walter Zoo
About the same distance to the west is Switzerland’s largest privately run zoo. Walter Zoo has around 500 animals from over 100 species. The centrepiece is the chimpanzee habitat containing a colony of 17, and a new Serengeti enclosure that features lions. The zoo is internationally certified and takes part in breeding programs. It’s also much more than a static animal attraction: Children can take camel and pony rides and interact with farm species at the petting zoo, and there are also nocturnal experiences like staying overnight in a tipi tent.