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per person incl tour €5; 9am-5pm Mon-Fri, 10am-3pm Sat), across tiny Seilergasse, you can try out Gutenberg’s technology yourself – on the condition that you’re at least five years old. You’ll be issued with a smock (the unique odour of printers’ ink may, for many, conjure up the nobility of making the written word available to the masses, but the gloop is hell to get out of fabric) and instructed in the art of hand-setting type – backwards, of course. Nearby, master craftsmen produce elegant posters, certificates and cards using the labour-intensive technologies of another age. Fascinating, especially in an era when ‘print’ usually means ‘Ctrl+P’.

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DISCOUNT CARD

The Rheinland-Pfalz & Saarland Card (FreizeitCard; http://rlpcard.de; 24hr/3-day/6-day €14/39/55; Apr-Oct), sold at most tourist offices, gets you a slew of freebies and some great discounts.

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FORTY-TWO LINES THAT CHANGED THE WORLD

Johannes Gutenberg, the inventor of printing with moveable type, is one of those rare epochal figures whose achievements truly changed the course of human history.

Little is known about Gutenberg the man, who was born in Mainz in the very late 1300s, trained as a goldsmith and then, in the late 1420s, left for Strasbourg (now in France), where he first experimented with printing technology. By 1448 he was back in Mainz, still working on his top-secret project and in debt to some rather impatient ‘venture capitalists’. But eventually his perseverance paid off and he perfected a number of interdependent technologies: metal type that could be arranged into pages; precision moulds to produce such type in large quantities; a metal alloy from which type could be cast; a type of oil-based ink suitable for printing with metal type; and press technology derived from existing wine, paper and bookbinding presses.

Despite several lawsuits, by 1455 Gutenberg had produced his masterpiece, the now-legendary Forty-Two-Line Bible, so-named because each page has 42 lines. Thus began a new era in human history, one in which the printed word – everything from Martin Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses to pornography and the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of Citizen to Nazi propaganda – was to become almost universally accessible. In all of human history, arguably only two other inventions have come close to having the same impact on the availability of information: the alphabet and the internet.

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LANDESMUSEUM MAINZ

The rich and far-reaching collection of the Landesmuseum Mainz (State Museum; 285 70; www.landesmuseum-mainz.de, in German; Grosse Bleiche 49-51; adult/student & senior/family €3/2/6, separate fee for special exhibitions, Sat free; 10am-8pm Tue, 10am-5pm Wed-Sun), housed in the former prince-elector’s stables, traces the region’s cultural history from the Stone Age to the present. Treasures include the richly festooned facade of the Kaufhaus am Brand, a 14th-century trading house, and the famous Jupitersäule (on display again in 2010), a Roman triumphal column from the 1st century. Also of special interest are Dutch and Flemish paintings, faience and art-nouveau glass.

MUSEUM FÜR ANTIKE SCHIFFAHRT

In 1981 excavations for a hotel unearthed the remains of five spectacular wooden ships of the Romans’ Rhine flotilla, used around AD 300 to thwart Germanic tribes trying to intrude upon Roman settlements. They are now on display, along with two full-size replicas, in the Museum für Antike Schiffahrt (Museum of Ancient Seafaring; 286 630; www.rgzm.de; Neutorstrasse 2b; admission free; 10am-6pm Tue-Sun).

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Tours

Walking tours of the city (€5) in German and English begin at the tourist office at 2pm on Saturday. From May to October, there are additional tours at 2pm on Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday.

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Sleeping

The tourist office has a room reservations hotline ( 286 2128; 9am-1pm & 2-6pm Mon-Fri, 10am-4pm Sat, 11am-3pm Sun); bookings can be made in person, by phone or via www.touristik-mainz.de (under Accommodation).