Mainz, The Temporary Gutenberg Museum

Next we went to the new location of the Gutenberg Museum. It’s moved temporarily into the Natural History Museum, next to an old church, that also houses part of the Gutenberg Museum (one large room of modern-day applications of the press in printing).

The new location holds just a small fraction of the museum–they showed the movie, we saw the vault room, and there was the room in the church. The real museum was large and covered 3 floors. We spent about an hour here today, divided again into 2 groups, with 2 tour guides.

Here we are in the Natural History Museum waiting to go in.

We saw an English version of the film telling the story of Gutenberg.

Then a guide demonstrated how the printing press works.

This is the device Gutenberg invented that changed the printing world:

Pigments used in the illuminations:

Here are the precious books kept in the vault:

In the vault we saw 3 original Bibles, one OT, one NT and one combined. We also saw a hand-written Bible from the same time period, to show the contrast and difference.