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Welcome in Museum Plantin-Moretus

Walk inside the printing office and house of the Plantin-Moretus family as if you were a friend of theirs visiting 400 years ago.

On display

From scribble to cartoon

Drawings from Bruegel to Rubens
    Friday 17 November 2023 until Sunday 18 February 2024 from 10:00 to 17:00

In this exhibition, the Museum Plantin-Moretus shows the 100 most beautiful old master drawings from Flemish collections. From scribble to cartoon: Drawings from Bruegel to Rubens gives an astonishing and representative overview of the art of drawing in our regions in the 16th and 17th centuries.

Museum Plantin-Moretus weer open

Welcome

Practical information related to opening hours, ticket sales, time slots, accessibility and everything the museum has to offer.

de oude drukkerij in het Museum Plantin-Moretus

The Museum Plantin-Moretus, a UNESCO World Heritage site

On Google Arts & Culture

Did you know that the Museum Plantin-Moretus was the first museum on the UNESCO World Heritage list? Visit the museum online on Google Arts & Culture.

Rubenshuisbruiklenen

Five special pieces from the Rubens House on a visit

During an extensive renovation, the doors of the Rubens House remain closed. Fortunately, many works from the collection can be admired elsewhere. Five pieces are moving to Museum Plantin-Moretus. You can now view them there as part of the permanent exhibition. Martine Maris, Curator of the Rubens House, provides a taste of the five very diverse works.

Discover the museum and collection online

The Plantin-Moretus Museum in your home

The museum is always open online

We are always open if you go online. Go online with and dive into our collections, view our online exhibitions, take a virtual visit of the museum, browse through the museum guide, or listen to the audio guide. Everything to stay indoors and take your mind off things for a while.

Drawn to perfection | a curator's view

10 video's about unique drawings of the 17th century

Curator Virginie D'haene will guide you through the exhibition 'Drawn to perfection', along the most spectacular 17th-century drawings from our collection.

Impressive woodblocks

Woodblocks from the Plantin printing house

The Plantin-Moretus Museum keeps an extraordinary collection of 14,000 woodblocks. With these examples of true craftsmanship, book illustrations and other decorative elements were printed in the Plantin printing house.

Reading room open by appointment

Reading room

In our reading room you can consult numerous authentic documents. You will find a precious archive of printed works, manuscripts and drawings.

Digital services

If you have a simple research question, we will try to help you as much as possible by email.

New

Louisa Hunter-Bradley & Jennifer Awes Freeman

Travel grant to Antwerp awarded to two international researchers (2023-2024)

For the fifth time already, two foreign researchers will receive a travel grant to come to Antwerp for their research on the history of the printed book.

Stories from the Plantinian Archives

The Plantinian Archives are a treasure trove of information about daily life at the Plantinian press. An That is why our archivist is able to bring the Moretus family and their employees back to life. The blog will be published on Medium, in English.

De Thiende van Simon Stevin

The museum celebrates mathematical genius Simon Stevin with web expo on Google Arts & Culture

In 2020 it will be 400 years ago that mathematician and inventor Simon Stevin (1548 - 1620) died. On May 18, International Museum Day, the Plantin-Moretus Museum commemorates the mathematical genius with an online exhibition on Google Arts & Culture. After all, the 'Officina Plantiniana' was the printer and publisher of almost 90% of Stevin's work.

Sketchbook young Rubens from the Plantin-Moretus Museum collection recognised as a masterpiece

30.04.2020 | The Flemish Government has placed no less than 194 drawings from the Prints room collection of the Plantin-Moretus Museum on the Masterpiece List. The best of the examples is a sketchbook with 43 drawings made by Peter Paul Rubens when he was 12-13 years old.

City of Antwerp and Google put more than 100,000 books online

The City of Antwerp and Google signed an agreement to digitise a large portion of the collections of the Hendrik Conscience Heritage Library and the Plantin-Moretus Museum. This entails more than 100,000 works from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century that will be made freely accessible in the coming years via Google Books and the library catalogues of both institutions. The books to be scanned are no longer subject to copyright.

New acquisition: a unique oil sketch by the baroque painter Theodoor Boeyermans

Discover Museum Plantin-Moretus’ new acquisition: an oil sketch by Antwerp's 17th-century Baroque painter Theodoor Boeyermans. The work portrays the glorification of the house of Plantin-Moretus.

The museum in a nutshell

Step into the house and the print shop.

Enter the world of the influential Plantin and Moretus family. Christophe Plantin spent his life among books. Together with his wife and five daughters, he lived in an imposing property on Vrijdagmarkt. Plantin and Jan Moretus built up an impressive printing business. Today, this is the only museum in the world to be recognised as a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Museum Plantin-Moretus

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