UNESCO World Heritage Sites Near the Museum Plantin-Moretus: The 16th-Century Antwerp Printing House That Produced 8-Language Bibles, the World’s Two Oldest Presses and a Rubens Letter in the Archive
The Museum Plantin-Moretus in Antwerp is the world’s only intact 16th-century printing house — a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2005 — containing the two oldest surviving European printing presses, the archive of a publisher who produced the first 8-language Bible for Philip II of Spain, and a first edition of Thomas More’s Utopia. The Moretus family preserved the house, presses, type, and correspondence for three centuries before selling it to the City of Antwerp in 1876 with nothing dispersed.
