Kreuzlingen

Kreuzlingen is a municipality in north-eastern Switzerland, in the canton of Thurgau, and the seat of the district that bears its name. With a population of about 22,000 it is the second-largest city of the canton after Frauenfeld. It lies directly on the border with the German city of Konstanz, and together the two form the largest conurbation on Lake Constance, with almost 120,000 people. Its name comes from an Augustinian monastery, Crucelin, later Kreuzlingen Abbey, which was founded in 1125 by the Bishop of Constance; the abbey buildings became a teachers school after secularization in 1848. The municipality covers 11.49 square kilometres as of 2009. Steamboats reached it in 1824 and railways in 1871 and 1875, and the Bellevue sanatorium, open from 1857 to 1980, was important to the history of existential psychotherapy.