Inspiring museum explaining one of the greatest technological advancements in human history!

The museum is located in the city center, easily accessible by foot and the entrance fee 5€ seems more than reasonable for a museum of such importance. Audio guide with headphones was available for an additional 3.5€ for which I had to use ID as a deposit. The pamphlets with a map of the museum with a short description of each section were free of charge, but it was not really helpful nor informative to me at all. All facilities including a nice gift shop, restrooms and locker room were located at the ground floor, as well as the cinema. The staff in the museum was rather dull, but helpful when needed.

I started my tour following the audio guide which was perfectly narrated (with a nice and soothing voice), but it was obviously outdated as some objects being described were not where they were supposed to be. The same goes for an English video I watched in the cinema, it was more than 10 years old. The 25-minute long tour showed me the highlight of Guttenberg's discovery - the movable type printing - as it explained each individual part, the printing machines and of course the most important items in the museum, the Guttenberg bibles. They are located in a vault with very dim light, constantly monitored and guarded as they are precious and only few of these in the world still exist. I must say the books are impressive, considering they were printed nearly 600 years ago. They are generally considered the most beautiful printed books in the world thanks to their unique artwork. Unfortunately pictures are not allowed to be taken inside the vault.

There were additional 5 audio tours worth taking. It was quite simple to find their beginnings as the stickers on the floor and signs on the cabinets helped a lot to navigate. Workshops and shows (only in German) were happening around the museum at certain times and visitors were informed with the sound system, either by chime or by voice, when and where they started, which was very helpful.

The lighting in the museum was very specific, which I understand given the age of some of the books, however the positioning of the lights was very wrong almost everywhere. It was extremely difficult to take a picture without my own shadow, let alone appreciate the object or read its description. At first it didn't bother me, but with time it got annoying.

As for the provided explanations the museum is really not consistent - most of information were available only in German, some were bi-lingual (e.i. in the Asian section, the Korean part was only in German, however the Islamic part was bilingual and also narrated), others offering audio tours and some that as non German speaker I could not enjoy all (I wanted to visit the history of newspaper section, but the provided description was only German and no audio guide was available). The audio tour of the history of bookbinding was very fascinating, located on the highest floor.

Overall I did spend more than two hours here learning about the life of Johannes Guttenberg and his printing machines and despite the museum not being perfect I did enjoy my time here.

Visited in October 2022.