Will Suture for Travel

Mainz

We spent the morning in Mainz. This town is famous for being the birthplace of Johannes Gutenburg, the inventor of the moveable-type printing press in the mid-15th century. 

Mainz was heavily damaged in WWII bombing. Some of the city center was rebuilt in the original style, but most of the city is post-war modern. Very little of the historical architecture remains.

The main town square. The buildings in the back were rebuilt to exactly match the buildings that were bombed in WWII. The ones on the right were not and were replaced with a more modern outdoor mall in the 1980s.
This is a well in the town square from the Renaissance dating from 1526.

Mainz Cathedral was damaged in WWII, but the main vault was intact. The cathedral is over 1000 years old and the original cathedral was modeled after Speyer Cathedral. Of course, over the years it has been remodeled and modified. 

Huge door knocker on the cathedral.

While we were there, they were having their farmer’s market in the town square. They hold it 3 days a week.

Our guide is from here and says this farmer always brings one of his chickens to advertise the quality of his eggs. The chicken spends the day sitting there and he feeds it throughout the day.

We went to the Gutenburg Museum and watched a demonstration of how the moveable-type printing press likely worked. There are no existing models, but there are drawings of it. I was not allowed to take pictures of anything else in the museum. We did see a complete and a partial Gutenburg Bible along with a comparison illuminated Bible (hand copied on parchment). All quite amazing.

Gutenburg printing demonstration. He made a cast letter for the press and printed a page.
a printed page from the printing press done during the demonstration

The rest of our day was spent sailing on the Rhine.

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