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Johannes Gutenberg was born in Mainz around 1400, and his printing press, invented here in the 1440s, changed the distribution of knowledge more thoroughly than anything before the internet. The Gutenberg Museum on the Liebfrauenplatz has two original Gutenberg Bibles behind glass and reproduces the printing process in its working demonstration workshop. The Mainz Cathedral across the square has been here in various forms since 975 AD, one of three Imperial Cathedrals along the Rhine alongside Speyer and Worms, its red sandstone towers visible from most of the old town.

Mainz has a thousand-year history of Jewish life, and in 2021 it joined Speyer and Worms as a UNESCO World Heritage Site under the ShUM designation, recognising the three cities as the birthplace of Ashkenazi Jewish culture in the medieval period.

Rabbi Gershom ben Judah, who issued rulings in the eleventh century that shaped Jewish law for generations, taught in Mainz. The Jewish cemetery on Mombacher Strasse contains headstones dating to 1062. This is the kind of depth that requires some attention to notice, because the city does not shout about it.