The Plantin-Moretus Museum, Antwerp

In which I step back in time, and visit the world's oldest surviving printing house in Antwerp, Belgium.

{Antwerp, Belgium}

In 1548, a young bookbinder from the Touraine region of France set up shop in Antwerp, Belgium. His name was Christophe Plantin, and by 1555, he had expanded his little bookbinding business to include a print shop, as well.

Book printing was still in its infancy in 1555. Johannes Gutenberg had printed his ground-breaking 42-line Bible exactly 100 years earlier, just a couple of hundred miles away in the German city of Mainz. But it was Antwerp, along with Paris and Venice, that had grown to become a leading center of the new trade.

During Christophe’s lifetime, the Plantin Press grew to become the largest and most successful printing house in the world. In 1579, after years of growth and success, Christopher Plantin bought a residence on one of Antwerp’s oldest squares - the Vrijdagmarkt - and moved his press into one wing of the grand building. It remained in business there until 1867, when the press’s building, collection and archives were sold to the city of Antwerp. It opened as a museum and research center the following year.