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Home of the Printed Word
After all passengers returned from the morning excursion to Heidelberg, the Artistry II set sail for Mainz, Germany. The schedule allowed for up to 2.5 hours of individual touring of the city.
Possibilities included a stroll thru the old town center, a visit to the Gutenberg Museum, shopping, or our choice of visiting the Church of St. Stephen with its stained-glass windows by Marc Chagall.
Strolling Thru Mainz
On Our Own
Johannes Gutenberg was born in early 1400s in Mainz, Germany. He would borrow money to setup a print shop and produce a 42-line Latin Bible. The process of using movable type in a cheap and efficient manner would change the world. The Gutenberg Museum, in the heart of the old town center, has an original copy of the famous bible. The museum was only open until 5 PM so we had to skip visiting it in order to get to the church before it closed for the evening.
Marc Chagall Windows
The highlight of our visit to Mainz, was our visit to the Church of St. Stephen (Stephan) where we saw the gorgeous stained-glass windows of Marc Chagall.
The Chagall choir windows in St. Stephan are unique in Germany. Between 1978 and his death in 1985, Russian Jewish artist Marc Chagall created nine stained-glass windows of scriptural figures in luminous blue. The figures depict scenes from the Old Testament.
Cathedral (Dom)
Mainz Cathedral or St. Martin's Cathedral is located near the historical center and market square of the city. Since it was only about a 20 minute walk back to our ship, we had decided to make that our final stop on our self-guided walking tour.
This 1000-year-old Roman Catholic cathedral is predominantly Romanesque in style, but later exterior additions over many centuries have resulted in the appearance of various architectural influences seen today.
Mainz is a very easy city to explore on foot. If you only have a limited amount of time for exploration, like we did, we'd suggest picking one or more of the attractions mentioned here.
Additional photos can be found on our Rhine & Moselle Shutterfly page:
Mainz - On Our Own
Mainz - St. Stephan
Mainz - Cathedral
Click on the image to the right for more Blog posts about this trip.
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