Abbey Library of St Gallen: Director’s Choice

The Abbey Library of St Gallen illustrates the part played by the monasteries in the development of western culture and is unique in its quality and completeness. The Abbey Library of St Gallen is one of the oldest libraries still surviving today. It can be traced back to the Irish missionary Gall, who established the first community of monks in St Gallen in 612. As the ’healing-place of the soul’, the library has a collection that is unique in the world for its quality and completeness, illustrates the part played by the monasteries in the development of western culture and contains many treasures. Its Baroque Hall is one of the most beautiful library spaces imaginable.The library and its collection are listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site and are included in its Memory of the World Register.The members of the management team of the Abbey Library present a personal choice of the most important items in the library and a few other objects that are worth seeing.

Cornel Dora is an academic librarian and has an Executive MBA from the University of St Gallen. Since 2013 he has been the St Gallen Abbey Librarian. Philipp Lenz, the Deputy Abbey Librarian, has been cataloging and researching the medieval manuscripts in the Abbey Library of St Gallen since 2004. Franziska Schnoor, Deputy Head of Research, joined the Abbey Library of St Gallen in 2010 as an acedemic assistant. In 2017 she gained a Doctorate in Medieval and Modern Latin Philology from the University of Göttingen.