In the city of St. Gallen, in northeastern Switzerland

 "My rank is the highest known in Switzerland. I’m a free citizen."

– George Bernard Shaw
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(in northeastern Switzerland) If visitors look beyond the chocolate, cuckoo clocks, and yodeling, contemporary Switzerland (a land of four languages) is really all about delightful journeys, heart-thumping Alpine pursuits, and urban culture. This part of Switzerland is a great place to wander off the beaten path, while getting back to nature. Here, country lanes unwind like spools of thread, weaving through Appenzell’s patchwork meadows, past the steel-blue waters of Walensee (lake) and south to remote hamlets engulfed by the glacier-peaks of the Glarus Alps. This region calls for slow-motion touring, whether you’re cycling through cornfields and apple orchards or walking through Klettgau’s gold-tinged vineyards in the diffused light of autumn. From the thunderous Rheinfall to the calmer waters of Lake Constance, nature here is on a grand scale. Completing this tableau are castle-topped towns such as Stein am Rhein and Schaffhausen, their facades adorned with frescos and oriel windows, while in graceful St. Gallen (featured here), the abbey library will take your breath away with its rococo splendor.

+ The canton of St. Gallen is bounded (to the north) by Lake Constance (locally known as Bodensee); east by the Rhine Valley, which separates it from the Austrian state of Vorarlberg and from Liechtenstein; to the south by the cantons of Graubünden, Glarus, and Schwyz; west by the canton of Zürich; and northwest by the canton of Thurgau. St. Gallen's topography varies from the extensive Rhine plain to the rolling country of the Fürstenland in the northwest, to Alpine peaks in the south and in the upper Toggenburg (Thur Valley). More than 75-percent of the area is forested, and most of the rest is meadowland and Alpine pastures.
+ Saint Gallen city, the capital of the canton, evolved from the 7th-century hermitage of Saint Gall. Today, it is a urban agglomeration representing the center of eastern Switzerland. (The city is home of the University of St. Gallen, one of the best business schools in Europe.) In the Steinach Valley, the city is found just south of Lake Constance. In 612 the Celtic missionary St. Gall founded a hermitage on the site. Disciples joined him, and around 720 the foundation became a Benedictine abbey. Until the 11th century, the abbey school was the most important educational institution north of the Alps, and in its scriptorium were laid the foundations of the world-famed library. The town that developed around the abbey was ruled by the abbots, princes of the Holy Roman Empire after 1206. The abbey and the town allied with the Swiss Confederation in 1453 and 1454, respectively. Clerical rule ended with the Reformation in 1524, and the town became the capital of the new canton formed in 1803, when the abbey was disendowed. The town’s outlying parishes were incorporated in 1918, when a communal constitution was adopted.