Holiday in Mainz

About Mainz

Mainz, the state capital of Rhineland-Palatinate, is the city where Johannes Gutenberg invented movable type printing around 1450, triggering a media revolution that changed the world. Today, Mainz is a media city (headquarters of ZDF), a wine city, and one of the carnival strongholds of Germany. The Gutenberg Museum at Liebfrauenplatz is one of the oldest printing museums in the world and houses two of the 49 remaining Gutenberg Bibles — the so-called 42-line Bibles, considered the most beautiful printed books in history. In the printing workshop, visitors can work on a historical printing press themselves. The Mainz Cathedral of St. Martin is one of the three great Romanesque imperial cathedrals on the Rhine, alongside those in Worms and Speyer. Over 1,000 years old, it combines Romanesque, Gothic, and Baroque elements and towers over the entire old town with its west tower. The Mainz Fastnacht (not Carnival!) is legendary: The Rosenmontag parade is one of the largest in Germany, and the sessions with political cabaret in the Rheingoldhalle are broadcast live on television. The fifth season begins on November 11 and reaches its peak in the week before Ash Wednesday. Mainz is the wine capital: Located directly on the Rhine, surrounded by Rheinhessen, the largest wine-growing region in Germany, the Mainz Wine Market presents over 100 wines from local winemakers at the riverside at the end of August.