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MAINZ 

HISTORY

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Mainz has been a busy trading centre since Roman times as it is situated on the Rhine River, just across from the mouth of the Main River. It grew on the site of the Roman camp of Maguntiacum, or Mogontiacum (founded 1st cent. B.C.). In 746 the city was made  the seat of the first German archbishop (St. Boniface -c.675–754 ). The later archbishops acquired considerable territory around Mainz and in Franconia, on both sides of the Main, which they ruled as princes of the Holy Roman Empire.

Under the rule of the archbishops-electors Mainz flourished as a commercial and cultural center. Johannes Gutenberg (c.1397–1468) lived in Mainz, which he made the first printing center of Europe. Mainz was at the centre of many battles in the aftermath of the French Revolution: attacked by the French in 1792 and by the Prussians and Austrians in 1793 . It was ceded to France by two treaties in 1797 and 1801, but then ceded to Germany in 1816 after the fall of Napoleon.  It was (1873–1918) a fortress of the German Empire.  The Univ. of Mainz was founded in 1477, was discontinued in 1816, and was reestablished in 1946 as the Johannes Gutenberg Univ. In 1945 the city’s suburbs on the right bank of the Rhine were transferred to the state of Hesse.

Mainz shared the fate of many other important German cities during the Second World War : it was severely damaged but largely restored and rebuilt after 1945. Some of the most important monuments in the old inner city include the six-towered Romanesque cathedral (consecrated 1009; restored 19th cent.); the Renaissance-style electoral (archiepiscopal) palace (17th–18th cent.), which houses an art gallery and a museum of Roman and Germanic antiquities; and the Church of St. Peter (18th cent.).

An overview of hotels in Mainz. Other German cities.

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