St. Gallen

Alpstein: The Alpstein is the limestone mountain range that dominates the Appenzell region, a compact but rugged massif whose peaks — including Säntis, the range's highest point — rise sharply above rolling green farmland dotted with traditional Appenzell farmhouses. It's a serious hiking area with an extensive network of trails and staffed mountain huts (many run by the Swiss Alpine Club), ranging from easy family walks around lakes like Seealpsee to demanding ridge routes for experienced hikers. As a broader region rather than a single point, it's best treated as the umbrella destination for specific stops within it — Ebenalp, Seealpsee and Säntis are the most accessible individual highlights, and a visit to any of them functions as a way into the wider Alpstein landscape.

City Lounge is an unusual piece of urban design in central St. Gallen — an entire plaza, including the street surfaces, benches and even parked cars, coated in a rubber-like grey material by artists Pipilotti Rist and Carlos Martinez, creating a surreal, uniformly textured outdoor "living room" in the middle of the city. It functions as a genuine public space (people sit on the rubberized furniture and walk through it as a normal thoroughfare) while also being a piece of public art in its own right. It's a quick, offbeat stop that stands out precisely because it's so different from anything else in St. Gallen's otherwise historic old town — worth the short detour for anyone curious about contemporary public art.

Drei Weieren ("three ponds") is a set of small reservoir ponds on a hillside above St. Gallen, originally built for water supply and fire-fighting purposes, that have become one of the city's most popular recreational spots — used for open-air swimming in summer and simply enjoyed as green space with views back over the old town's rooftops and the cathedral's twin towers year-round. It's a distinctly local rather than tourist-oriented spot, giving a good sense of how St. Gallen residents actually use their city, and it's worth the uphill walk for the view over the old town alone, even outside swimming season.

Ebenalp is best known for the short walk from its cable car station through the Wildkirchli caves — inhabited by prehistoric humans and later used as a hermitage and chapel — which opens out onto one of the most photographed spots in Switzerland: the Aescher guesthouse, a restaurant built directly into the cliff face with a dizzying view over the valley below. The combination of caves, cliff-face building and views has made it one of the most Instagrammed locations in the country in recent years. Beyond the Aescher viewpoint, Ebenalp is also a starting point for hikes down to Seealpsee, a striking alpine lake, making it possible to combine the cave-and-cliff-restaurant novelty with a genuine hiking outing in the same visit.

Lake Constance is a large lake shared by Switzerland, Germany and Austria, with the Swiss shore near St. Gallen centered on Rorschach, a lakeside town with a historic harbor and promenade. It's a notably calmer, flatter landscape than Switzerland's alpine lakes further south — more about lakeside towns, orchards and gentle cycling routes than mountain drama. For visitors based in St. Gallen, it's a worthwhile change of pace from the hilly Appenzell countryside — an easy train trip to Rorschach for a lakeside walk, a swim in season, or a boat trip that can extend into Germany or Austria if you want a genuine cross-border day out.

Maestrani's Chocolarium: The Chocolarium is the visitor experience run by Maestrani, a long-established Swiss chocolate maker, combining a self-guided exhibition on chocolate production with a working view of the actual factory floor and a tasting/sampling area. It's smaller in scale and less polished than the bigger-name chocolate experiences like Maison Cailler, but it covers similar ground — the history of Swiss chocolate-making and a look at real production — at a shorter distance from St. Gallen than most alternatives. It's a solid half-day option for families or chocolate enthusiasts staying in the St. Gallen area who don't want to travel as far as western Switzerland's better-known chocolate factories.

Säntis, at 2,502 meters, is the highest peak in the Alpstein range and one of the most exposed viewpoints in Switzerland — on a clear day the panorama reportedly takes in six countries (Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Liechtenstein, France and Italy) across the surrounding lakes and mountain ranges. A weather station and broadcasting tower sit at the summit alongside visitor facilities, a reminder that this is a working meteorological site as well as a tourist destination. It's the most dramatic single viewpoint accessible from St. Gallen without serious hiking, though its exposure means the summit is also genuinely subject to fierce winds and can be socked in cloud even when the valley below is clear — worth checking conditions before committing to the trip.

Seealpsee is a small, strikingly clear alpine lake tucked beneath the Alpstein's peaks, ringed by steep green slopes and reachable only on foot, which keeps it feeling considerably less commercialized than more accessible Swiss lake viewpoints. Its combination of still, reflective water and dramatic surrounding rock faces makes it one of the more photographed hiking destinations in eastern Switzerland. It works well paired with Ebenalp and the Aescher guesthouse on the same outing — most visitors either hike down to the lake from Ebenalp or up to Ebenalp from the lake, making a satisfying loop out of what would otherwise be two separate stops.

St. Gallen Cathedral is a lavish Baroque church, rebuilt in its current form in the 18th century, known for its richly decorated ceiling frescoes and elaborate stucco work — a striking contrast to the more austere Reformed-tradition churches common elsewhere in German-speaking Switzerland. Along with the adjoining monastery library, it forms the core of the Abbey District, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Entry is generally free and quick, making it an easy stop even for visitors mainly heading to the more specialized Stiftsbibliothek next door — the two are usually visited together given their shared location within the abbey precinct.

St. Gallen Old Town: St. Gallen's old town is known for its oriel windows (erker) — elaborately carved wooden and stone bay windows projecting from building facades, a distinctive local architectural tradition tied to the city's historic wealth from linen and textile trading. Beyond the abbey district's UNESCO sites, the surrounding streets are a genuinely pleasant, less crowded old town to wander than some of Switzerland's more heavily touristed centers. It rewards looking up as much as ahead — the carved details on the oriel windows vary building to building, and a slow walk through the pedestrian streets around Marktplatz and Gallusplatz takes in a good cross-section of them.

Stiftsbezirk St. Gallen: The Stiftsbezirk is the walled abbey precinct at the historic core of St. Gallen, a UNESCO World Heritage Site built around the former Benedictine monastery that gave the city its name and much of its early influence as a center of learning in medieval Europe. It encompasses the cathedral, the Stiftsbibliothek (abbey library) and surrounding administrative buildings, still recognizable as a coherent walled complex distinct from the rest of the old town around it. It's the natural single stop that ties St. Gallen's two headline sights — the cathedral and the library — together, and walking the district as a whole gives a much better sense of the abbey's former scale and importance than visiting either building in isolation.

Stiftsbibliothek St. Gallen: The Stiftsbibliothek is one of the oldest and most important monastic libraries in the world, holding around 170,000 volumes including roughly 2,100 manuscripts dating back over a millennium, some to the 8th and 9th centuries. Its Rococo main hall — all carved wood, inlaid floors and elaborate ceiling frescoes — is considered one of the finest surviving library interiors in Europe, and it's still a working scholarly library, not purely a museum piece. Visitors put on cloth slippers over their shoes before entering to protect the historic wooden floor, a small ritual that adds to the sense of stepping into something genuinely preserved rather than staged for tourists; a rotating selection of manuscripts is usually on display in glass cases within the hall.

Textilmuseum St. Gallen: The Textilmuseum covers St. Gallen's history as one of the world's leading centers of embroidery and textile production, an industry that made the city extraordinarily wealthy from the 19th century into the early 20th, with St. Gallen lace and embroidery once sold to fashion houses worldwide. The collection includes historic textile machinery, embroidery samples, and finished garments and lace pieces showing the level of craftsmanship the industry achieved. It's a strong niche museum for anyone curious why a mid-sized Swiss city ended up with such a grand abbey library and old town — the textile wealth explains much of St. Gallen's historic architecture and civic ambition, and the museum makes that connection directly.