Mainz
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
mints, or Mayence, ma-ons', a city of the Rhine. It is situated on the left bank opposite the mouth of the Main. The Rhine is spanned by a stone bridge which has replaced a former and more picturesque bridge of boats. The city has a population of 85,000 and is an important center of trade in grain, flour, wine, coal, and wood. It has busy factories of leather, furniture, hardware, tobacco, beer, carpets, soap, hats, chemicals, musical instruments, and silverware. It is a military point of strength. The interest of the traveler centers in the antiquities. Mainz was originally a Celtic stronghold. It was occupied as a Roman fortress, 14 B. C., and became an important trading point. Christianity was introduced about 550. The city was favored by Charlemagne and it was for centuries the center of church affairs in the German Empire . It was also the center of a league of Rhenish towns engaged in trade. Such was its prosperity that it was known as the "Golden Mainz." A cathedral, partly Gothic; the citadel; a monument, said to have been erected by the Roman legions in honor of the Roman Drusus, 9 B. C.; the ancient palace of the archbishop, now a library, and a rich museum of Roman and Roman-German antiquities; the ancient cemetery in which Roman soldiers were buried; the quaint old streets; the promenades, pleasure gardens, and flowing Rhine, -all attract the tourist's attention. The house in which Gutenberg set up the first printing press still stands. A statue in his honor, designed by Thorwaldsen, was erected in Gutenberg Square in 1837. See Gutenberg ; Cathedral ; Rhine
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Aiton's 1910 note that Mainz was "a military point of strength" and that "the house in which Gutenberg set up the first printing press still stands" both belong to a vanished city: the fortress works were dismantled after the First World War, French troops occupied the town from 1918, and Allied bombing—above all the raid of 27 February 1945—levelled most of the old centre, including the quaint streets the guide recommended to travellers. The cathedral was gutted and rebuilt, Thorvaldsen's Gutenberg statue survives, and the population has grown from 85,000 to roughly 220,000; since 1946 Mainz has been the capital of the Land of Rhineland-Palatinate and seat of a new Johannes Gutenberg University. Roman Mainz has kept turning up: the hulls of late-Roman warships found in 1981–82 now have their own museum, and a sanctuary of Isis was uncovered under a shopping arcade in 1999. The trades listed in 1910—leather, hats, soap, musical instruments—have largely given way to broadcasting (ZDF is based here) and to BioNTech, the Mainz firm whose mRNA vaccine was the first authorised against COVID-19 in 2020.
Written for this edition, 2026.