Flawil Museum of Local History

The "Lindengut" villa of the former textile industrialist Huldreich Ottiker has been both a residential and local history museum since 1989. With its surrounding park, water basin and tufa grotto, it bears witness to Flawil's textile past. For more than 200 years, carters from Flawil transported goods for eastern Swiss textile masters within Switzerland, to Frankfurt am Main, to Lyon, even to Marseille and beyond. With the construction of the railroad, they lost their livelihood. Textile businesses such as weaving mills, bleaching works, dye works and embroidery factories emerged, and embroidery houses shaped the village landscape and working life in the Lower Toggenburg municipality of Flawil for decades. The museum has a considerable collection of historical film material, e.g. the oldest film in the canton of St.Gallen from around 1905.