About this place
Founded in 1900 on the five hundredth anniversary of Johannes Gutenberg's birth, this museum celebrates the Mainz goldsmith whose invention of movable metal type around 1450 changed the course of human knowledge. For nearly a century its home was the baroque merchant house Zum Römischen Kaiser, facing the Dom across Liebfrauenplatz, and its greatest treasures are two of the roughly forty nine surviving copies of the 42 line Bible, Gutenberg's masterwork. Inside, visitors trace the story of the written and printed word from clay tablets and medieval manuscripts to the presses that flooded Europe with cheap books and ideas. A faithful reconstruction of Gutenberg's workshop lets you watch type being cast and pages being pulled, just as they were more than five and a half centuries ago. In late 2024 the historic building closed for a major rebuild, and the collection moved to a lively interim home nearby while a new museum rises for the future.
Key facts
- 1900 founded — Opened on the 500th anniversary of Gutenberg's birth, making it one of the world's oldest printing museums
- 2 Bibles — Original Gutenberg Bibles are kept here, out of only around 49 copies surviving worldwide
- 1282 pages — Fill each two volume Gutenberg Bible, printed in Mainz between 1452 and 1455
📍 Liebfrauenplatz 10, 55116, Mainz