Plan of Saint Gall

The Plan of Saint Gall is a medieval architectural drawing of a monastic compound dating from 820–830 AD.^[1] It depicts an entire Benedictine monastic compound, including church, houses, stables, kitchens, workshops, brewery, infirmary, and a special building for bloodletting. According to calculations based on the manuscript's tituli the complex was meant to house about 110 monks, 115 lay visitors, and 150 craftmen and agricultural workers.^[2]

The Plan was never actually built.^[3] It was so named because it is dedicated to Gozbert, abbot of the Abbey of Saint Gall. The planned church was intended to hold the relics of the monastery's founder and namesake, the hermit Saint Gall. The plan was stored in the library of the monastery, the famous Abbey library of Saint Gall, where it remains to this day (indexed as Codex Sangallensis 1092).

It is the only surviving major architectural drawing from the roughly 700-year period between the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the 13th century. It is considered a national treasure of Switzerland and remains a significant object of interest among modern scholars, architects, artists and draftspeople for its uniqueness, its beauty, and the insights it provides into medieval culture.