Mainz

Mainz (French, Mayence), city in south-west Germany, capital of Rhineland-Palatinate, on the Rhine opposite the mouth of the River Main. It is a major port, a leading trade centre for wine, and a manufacturing city whose products include chemicals, machinery, metal goods, precision instruments, and printed fabrics. The city includes 445 hectares (1,100 acres) of vineyards.

Among the city's points of interest are its famous Romanesque cathedral (early 11th century) with sculpture by the medieval Master of Naumburg; St Stephen's Church, with stained glass windows by Marc Chagall, executed between 1976 and 1979; a museum of Roman and Germanic history; and a museum of the Rhineland-Palatinate. Also in Mainz is the Gutenberg Museum (1900), commemorating the life and work of Johann Gutenberg, the first European to print with hand-set type cast in moulds. His press made Mainz the cradle of printing in Europe. The museum contains one of the few remaining copies of the original Bible printed between 1452 and 1455. The Johannes Gutenberg University is noted for a number of its acclaimed institutes, including the Max Planck Institute. Several festivals are held in the city throughout the year.

In the 1st century bc, Roman soldiers built the fort of Maguntiacum (Mogontiacum) on the site of a former Celtic settlement. The Romans had deserted it by the middle of the 5th century ad. The archbishopric of Mainz was founded in about 745, with the English missionary St Boniface as the first archbishop. Mainz was proclaimed a free city in 1244. The archbishopric acquired much land and power, before being secularized in 1803 while the city was under French control. In 1816 France passed governance of the city to the province of Hesse-Darmstadt. Much of Mainz was destroyed by bombing in World War II, and the city was damaged by the severe floods that occurred throughout north-western Europe in early 1995. Population 186,100 (2005 estimate).