Explorer Mayence

Mainz Cathedral was begun around 975 under Archbishop Willigis and largely completed by 1036 after a fire on its 1009 dedication day. Built mainly in Romanesque style with later Gothic chapels, the red sandstone cathedral is dedicated to St Martin and ranks among the three Kaiserdome of the Holy Roman Empire.

St. Christoph's Church stands beside Mainz Cathedral as a preserved ruin. Built in Gothic style in the 13th and 14th centuries, it was the church where printer Johannes Gutenberg was baptised. Allied bombing destroyed the roof and interior in 1942, leaving only the outer walls and tower, now maintained as a war memorial with a small chapel inside.

The Sanctuary of Isis and Magna Mater was a Roman religious complex built in the 1st century CE in Mogontiacum. Builders working on the Römerpassage shopping centre uncovered it by chance in 1999; since 2003 the excavated walls have been displayed in place as the Taberna Archaeologica, reached via a glass walkway in the centre's basement.

The Gutenberg Museum was founded in 1900 and holds two copies of the Gutenberg Bible along with printing equipment, type and books spanning the history of writing and printing. Since its historic home near the cathedral closed for redevelopment in 2024, the collection is shown in an interim exhibition inside the Natural History Museum building on Reichklarastraße.

St. Stephan's Church stands on Mainz's highest hill, founded by Archbishop Willigis around 990; the present Gothic hall church was built between about 1267 and 1340. Its choir holds nine stained-glass windows made by Marc Chagall between 1978 and 1985 in shades of blue.

The Landesmuseum Mainz traces its collection to 1803, when Napoleon and Jean-Antoine Chaptal donated paintings to the city. Housed since 1937 in the former electoral stables, it holds works spanning prehistoric Venus figurines and Roman sculpture to Baroque furnishings and 19th- and 20th-century paintings, including pieces by Picasso and Hans Baldung Grien.

Mainz Citadel grew out of the earlier Schweickhardtsburg fortress and took its present quadrangular form around 1655 under Prince-Elector Johann Philipp von Schönborn, with a commander's building added in 1696. The grounds, now owned by the city, contain the Roman-era Drususstein monument and remains of the medieval St Jacob's Abbey.

The Roman Theatre of Mainz was the largest Roman theatre north of the Alps, with a diameter of about 116 metres and seating for roughly 10,000 spectators. Built in the Roman city of Mogontiacum, its remains went unrecognised after an 1884 railway find until identified in 1914; the ruins now lie exposed beside the city's Römisches Theater station.