Even today, the spirit of the once active Benedictine monks is palpable when you enter the world famous Abbey Library, which also is called the Seelenapotheke (healing place of the soul).
The abbey precinct with its magnificent Baroque cathedral forms a unique historical ensemble. The Abbey Library – with Switzerland’s most beautiful non-ecclesiastical Baroque hall – now contains 170,000 books. 50,000 of these are housed in the Baroque hall, where the 2,700 year old Egyptian mummy Shepenese is also to be found. The heart of the Abbey Library collection consists of 2,100 manuscripts of which some are on display at each of the current exhibitions. The entire abbey was declared a Unesco World Heritage site in 1983.
