The best running trails in St. Gallen

The Drei Weieren are the local recreation area of the city of St. Gallen. Once artificially created for the water supply of the city's residents, the textile industry, and as a fire-fighting water reservoir, they were used as a bathing and leisure spot after being connected to the Lake Constance water network. From the dam that prevents the water from running out, you have a fantastic view over the rooftops of the city and over parts of Lake Constance as far as the German shore. If you search the sky over the lake well, you can sometimes see a Zeppelin making its rounds. It takes off, steeped in history, in Friedrichshafen, where its famous predecessors once started. Two of the three small water oases are also suitable for swimming. The nostalgic bathing and changing huts are particularly pretty. They transport you back to the good old days of the Belle Époque. The Drei Weieren can be reached from the old town on foot or comfortably with the Mühleggbahn. A funicular from long-gone times. A jewel!

The highlight title is a bit of an exaggeration: the path is located between Rapperswil/SG and Pfäffikon/SZ, but far from the town of Schwyz... Please label, place, etc. highlights correctly.

The lake on both sides, the city and the castle make for a wonderful panorama. You also forget the very busy Seedammstrasse behind you.

The baroque monastery complex of St. Gallen is the glorious culmination of a thousand-year monastic culture, grown from the hermit community of the Irish missionary monk Gallus, who retreated into the wild high valley of the Steinach in 612. His hermitage became the starting point for a new monastic community under Abbot Otmar a hundred years later. In 747, an already fully developed monastery adopted the rule of Saint Benedict. Again a hundred years after Otmar, at the beginning of the 9th century, Abbot Gozbert ushered in the "golden age" of the abbey. In 1805, the monastery was dissolved by the newly founded canton. Since then, the monastery complex has housed the government and administration of the Canton of St. Gallen, as well as the head and administration of the diocese of the same name, created in 1823.

Since 1983, the Collegiate Church and Cathedral of St. Gallen (actually Collegiate Church of St. Gallus and Otmar) and the entire Abbey District have been part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site. The baroque new building of the Benedictine monastery church, built between 1755 and 1766, stands where Saint Gallus is said to be buried. From 720 onwards, Abbot Otmar organised the construction work around the crypt, and his successor Gozbert began the construction of the new monastery church from 820 onwards. The construction of the Collegiate Church in its present form - it is one of the last monumental sacred buildings of the late Baroque period - was planned by Gabriel Loser and Johann Caspar Bagnato. Its two 68-metre-high towers tower above the old town of St. Gallen.

The Evangelical Reformed Parish Church of St. Gallen is dedicated to the martyr Laurentius of Rome as its patron saint. For centuries, the church was the political, religious, and social center of the St. Gallen city republic and has had a lasting impact on the city's history. The first church on this site probably originated in the mid-12th century. St. Laurenzen received its present neo-Gothic appearance in 1845 according to the plans of Johann Georg Müller.

Beautiful place, very quiet

A busy but beautiful route across the dam, partly with a wide cycle path. Unfortunately, the section from Hurden to Pfäffikon on the gravel path is now closed to cyclists (until the first accident happens on the main road).