Flawil

Flawil is a municipality in the canton of St. Gallen in Switzerland with slightly over ten thousand inhabitants. It is the regional centre of the Untertoggenburg and belongs to the Wahlkreis, or constituency, of Wil. It was the capital of the earlier district of the same region. Flawil is first mentioned in 858 as Flawilare marcho, and several of the surrounding hamlets appear in records from about the same era: Alterswil in 858 as Altiricheswilae, Burgau in 964 as Purchouva and Oberglatt in 731 as villa Clata. As of 2006 the municipality had an area of 11.5 square kilometres, of which a little over half was farmland and roughly a fifth forest.