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Pfäfers
St. Gallenvillage
Pfäfers
Total population
1,556
Demographic figures from Swiss Federal Statistical Office. Overview below cites Wikipedia and may reference a different year.
City facts
Facts from Wikidata (CC0).
Overview
Pfäfers is a municipality in the Wahlkreis (constituency) of Sarganserland in the canton of St. Gallen in Switzerland. The villages belonging to this municipality are Pfäfers, St. Margrethenberg, Vadura, Valens, Vasön, and Vättis.
Read more on WikipediaHistory & geography
History
The area around Pfäfers, known as the Taminatal, was inhabited in prehistoric times. In the Drachenloch above Vättis, stone tools and bones of bears, perhaps 50,000 years old, were found; examples of these finds are on display in the local museum in Vättis. Pfäfers became important through the foundation of the Benedictine monastery, Pfäfers Abbey, in the first half of the 8th century. It existed for more than a thousand years and was closed in 1838. Since 1847, the abbey premises have been used as a psychiatric institution. Pfäfers is first mentioned in 762 as abbas de Fabarias. In 1247 it was mentioned as Pheuers and in 1288 as Pfaevaers. In Romansh it is known as Faveras. In the 14th century, Walser people settled in the Calfeisental valley, which was flooded in 1976 to form the Gigerwaldsee reservoir. The colony of St. Martin and the Walser house on the Alpine mountain Ebni are still open to visitors. Around 1240, the thermal spring in the Taminaschlucht ("gorge of the Tamina") was discovered. Those who bathed in the curative water were lowered into the narrow gorge on ropes. In 1630, a bath-house was constructed at the mouth of the gorge. The road to Ragaz was built in 1840, and in the following years the cure business was increasingly relocated there. Today, Bad Pfäfers ("Pfäfers Spa"), the oldest Baroque bath-house in Switzerland, houses a restaurant and a museum. Two important employers for the area are the clinic at Valens, which opened in 1970, and the power plants at Sarganserland, which opened in 1975. The clinic at Valens is specialised in rheumatology, neurology, and orthopaedics. The power plants at Sarganserland run a pumped-storage hydroelectric power plant, using the Gigerwaldsee reservoir and the compensation reservoir.
Geography
Pfäfers has an area of . Of this area, , 29.4% was used for agricultural purposes, while 30.6% was forested. Of the rest of the land, 1.1% was settled, consisting of buildings or roads, and the remainder, 38.9%, was non-productive, consisting of rivers or lakes. The municipality is located in the Sarganserland Wahlkreis. It stretches from the Taminatal south to the Kunkelspass and west into the high Calfeisental valley. The municipality has some of the largest elevation differences of any municipality, from Tamina Gorge at to the Ringelspitz at . It consists of the village of Pfäfers at the mouth of the Tamina Valley on a plateau above the Rhine, the villages of Valens, Vasön, and Vättis, as well as the hamlets of St. Margrethenberg and Vadura.
Excerpted from the corresponding Wikipedia article (CC BY-SA).
Geography
Coordinates & boundaries from the US Census TIGER/Line shapefiles.
Climate
Air quality
Walkability
Amenities nearby
Wildlife & biodiversity
Earthquake history
Photos
Sights & places nearby
Notable people from here
Nearby places in St. Gallen
- Bad Ragaz0.8 mi away · pop. 5,705
- Vilters3.4 mi away · pop. 2,082
- Wangs4.3 mi away · pop. 2,546
- Sargans4.9 mi away · pop. 6,075
- Mels5.5 mi away · pop. 6,230
- Trübbach5.7 mi away · pop. 1,344
- Heiligkreuz5.9 mi away · pop. 1,414
- Vättis6.3 mi away · pop. 400
- Azmoos6.3 mi away · pop. 1,687
- Weite-Wartau6.9 mi away · pop. 1,316
- Fontnas6.9 mi away
- Malans SG7 mi away
Geography & sun
Elevation, sunrise/sunset and daylight from Open-Meteo. Solar climatology from NASA POWER.
Nearby airports
Public attention
Pageview totals from the Wikimedia Pageviews API.
Books about Pfäfers
Search results from Open Library.
Recent natural events nearby
Ground air-quality sensors
Recently spotted species
Events
Gallery
Official Identifiers
BFS — Swiss Federal Statistical Office
- BFS-Nr
- 3294
- Population (Wikidata)
- 1,564
- Wikidata
- Q66052
Gemeindenummer via Wikidata P771
Sources
- • Wikipedia
- • Wikidata
- • Open-Meteo / sunrise-sunset.org
- • Wikipedia Pageviews API
- • Open Library
- • Wikidata SPARQL (CC0) — population, area, elevation, inception, head of government, Commons image
- • BFS — Swiss Federal Statistical Office — Gemeindenummer via Wikidata P771