Vanya wasn’t particularly impressed by Mainz but she’s not that keen on larger towns and, anyway, was always going to feel disappointed after Bacharach. I, on the other hand, quite like Mainz. The city has a wonderful cathedral and, joy of joys, there was a beer festival taking place over the weekend we were there.
We booked into a city centre camp site just over the river from the Old Town. The main bridge across the Rhine was a stones throw from the camp site and the beer festival was at the other end of it. Perfect!
Founded at the confluence of the Rhein and Main Rivers by the Romans in the 1st century, Mainz (previously Mogantiacum) is the capital of the Rhein Palatinate state. More than 80% of the city was destroyed by allied bombing in WW2 but, to see the place now, you would hardly know it. The damage was all very quickly and carefully restored except that the burnt out shell of one church, the Saint Christoph close to Karmerliterplatz, was left untouched as a memorial to the city’s victims of the many bombing raids between 1942 and 1945.
Anyone visiting Mainz old town will very quickly find the Marktplatz, simply follow the crowds of people. There’s a great deal of history to be found on this square and in adjoining areas. There are numerous pretty pastel coloured buildings, the Marktbrunnen Fountain, the Gutenberg Museum and most important of all, the Mainz Dom (St Martin’s Cathedral). It’s worth visiting the old town to see the Cathedral alone.
Almost adjacent to the Cathedral is the Gutenberg Museum. For the unaware, Mainz was home to Johannes Gutenberg who in the early 1450’s invented metal type printing. This form of mass printing revolutionised publishing and it perhaps comes as no surprise that Mainz subsequently became home to both Germany’s first ever newspaper and the Allgemeine Zeitung. William Caxton subsequently built on Gutenberg’s device and introduced printing into England.
After exploring the Markplatz and surrounding area, I headed off to the eastern side of the old town. There I found numerous stolpersteine (see previous blogs on Bacharach and Rudesheim) but, on altogether brighter note, I stumbled on the Evangelische Christuskirche (the Evangelical Church) where a string orchestra was rehearsing. I didn’t recognise the music they were playing but it was an enjoyable 30 minutes just listening and watching. I don’t think I have ever seen a conductor work so hard to get his points across to the orchestra.
On the way back to the camp site I paused at the beer festival down by the riverside. There were some 20 to 30 kiosks selling various predominantly German beers and a handful selling snack foods or wine. Needless to say, I stopped and tried a couple of the local beers (three to be precise) and a really cold Vinzentiner Weissbier won the day.
