Abbey library of St. Gallen

Above the door of the abbey library of St. Gallen is a Greek inscription, ΨΥΧΗΣ ΙΑΤΡΕΙΟΝ: a healing place for the soul. It echoes an inscription at the library of Ramesses II, and it states in two words the idea behind bibliotherapy. The room it announces is a Rococo hall designed by Peter Thumb and built between 1758 and 1767.

The hall is young compared with what it holds. The library goes back to Saint Othmar, founder of the abbey, and it came through a fire in 937 that destroyed the abbey around it. Its collection is the oldest in Switzerland. Among almost 160,000 volumes are 2,100 manuscripts from the 8th to the 15th century, many of Irish, Carolingian or Ottonian making, and 1,650 incunabula, books printed before 1500. Manuscript B of the Nibelungenlied is here. So, less expectedly, is an Egyptian mummy, Shep-en-Isis.

The furniture helps you find a subject. Carved cherubs above the cases hint at what lies below: the one over astronomy peers through a telescope. Most of the collection is open for public use, though books printed before 1900 are read in a separate reading room.

UNESCO listed the abbey and its library as a World Heritage Site in 1983. The manuscripts now travel further than visitors do. A project first called Codices Electronici Sangallenses put them online and grew into e-codices, which covers other libraries too. More than 900 manuscripts from St. Gallen can be read there, a working example of a digital library built on a medieval collection.