Canton of St. Gallen

The canton of St. Gallen, also called St Gall, is a canton in northeastern Switzerland whose capital is the city of St. Gallen. It covers an area of 2,026 square kilometres, about five percent of Switzerland, and had a resident population close to half a million as of 2015, about six percent of the country. The canton was formed in 1803 as a combination of the city of St. Gallen, the territories of the Abbey of St. Gall and several former subject territories of the Old Swiss Confederacy. Human activity in the area goes back to the Paleolithic, shown by stone tools and animal bones from the Wildenmannlisloch cave in the Toggenburg region, and the Romans left a vicus at Centum Prata, now in the municipality of Rapperswil-Jona.