Membership
IAPM Members
Museum Plantin-Moretus
| Address | Vrijdagmarkt 22-23, 2000, Flanders, Antwerp, Belgium |
|---|---|
| Telephone | + 32 3 221 14 51 |
| Website | www.museumplantinmoretus.be |
| Admission/Fee | 12 euro: Visitors from 26 to 65 years / 10 euro: Visitors from 12 to 25 years, Visitors over 65 years, Wheelchair-user / Free: Visitors under 12 years, Accompanying person of people with disabilities, A visit to the reading room |
| Opening Hours | The museum is open every day from 10 am to 5 pm. Monday is our regular closing day. We will also be closed on the following dates: Ascension Day 1 November 25 December |
| The Museum Plantin-Moretus was the private home of the world-renowned Plantin-Moretus family and the premises of their publishing firm. For three hundred years, the family continued to live and work here, preserving the building and documenting their activities. The original printing press and publishing offices, the residential quarters with their furnishings, and the business and family archives were preserved, including typography collections, old prints and important manuscripts, as well as a splendid collection of art. It became a museum in 1877. This museum and building are among the finest in the world. The residential quarters and printing office are recognised by UNESCO as world heritage. The business and family archives are a unique part of European history and listed by UNESCO’s as ‘Memory of the World’. The Plantin-Moretus Museum illustrates the courageous spirit with which a 16th-century publisher made both commercial and artistic innovations. Christophe Plantin (1520—89), his son-in-law Jan I Moretus (1543—1610) and grandson Balthasar I Moretus (1574—1641) were the key players at the Plantin Press, which endured over the lives of nine generations (specifically from 1555 until 1876). The tangible evidence of all of this is bound up in the house, the typography collection, the archives, the old prints and preparatory materials for the printing process. The Print Cabinet, with its core collection of 16th and 17th-century Antwerp prints, adds a further dimension to the whole. The link between the Plantin Press core collection and the Print Cabinet collection – some 250,000 objects and several tonnes of lead type, jointly tell a story about the power of the printed word and how such printed words can help inspire and shape the world. In short, the site is - a pre-industrial, printing heritage site that includes the oldest printing presses and the world’s most important 16th-century European typography collection - an historic building housing a magnificent collection of art - a Print Cabinet with masterpiece that are testimony to the exceptional visual idiom of the Southern Netherlands - archives that span 300 years of habitation and work from 1555 to 1876 and which are of global significance for the study of European (book) printing, trade and everyday life - a heritage library holding 16th and 17th-century works, including manuscripts dating from the 9th to the 19th century. |
|
Primary Contact Information
| Name | Iris Kockelbergh |
|---|---|
| Title/Position | Director |
| Telephone | +32 3 221 14 55 |
| Fax | |
| Iris.kockelbergh@antwerpen.be |