Rüegsau Priory

The origins of the community are unrecorded, but it is presumed to have been founded by Thüring of Lützelflüh, the founder of Trub Abbey, in the first half of the 12th century.

The priory acquired a number of scattered estates, which by around 1500 amounted to some hundred farms and other properties.

A small permanent exhibition on the nunnery's history can be seen in the parish house of Rüegsauschachen, displaying finds from excavations in 1964, 1965–1968 and 1978–1979 (for example, colour-glazed oven tiles, shards of pottery, tools and the fragments of a reliquary box).

The excavations also unearthed a statue of the Virgin Mary from the time of the nunnery, of which a copy stands in the hall next to the church.

The priory owned the still-extant chapel of Saint Blaise in the neighbouring hamlet of Rüegsbach, which has the oldest church bells in Switzerland (12th and 13th centuries).