The Gutenberg Museum has been in operation since 1900, making it one of the oldest printing museums in the world, and it holds two of the rare surviving Gutenberg Bibles — the books that launched the age of mass communication. The permanent collection traces the history of printing from Gutenberg's moveable type press of the 1440s through to modern digital reproduction, but the highlight is always the vault where the Bibles are housed.
The museum occupies the Romischer Kaiser building across from the cathedral. Beyond the Bibles, it displays early printed books, hand presses, and examples of typography and illustration from five centuries of European printing history. A reconstruction of a fifteenth-century print workshop gives a sense of what Gutenberg's original operation might have looked like. It is a genuinely important collection, not just a local monument to a famous son.