The Museum’s collections
The collections of the Museum Plantin-Moretus are hugely varied. They are all connected with the business and family life of Christophe Plantin and his successors, the Moretuses.
You can discover a large part of these unique collections here, including printing plates, presses, moulds, letter trays, punches and matrices, furniture, prints, drawings and paintings.
Rare books and manuscripts online
The library of approximately 25,000 old printed books and 638 manuscripts can be explored in Antwerp’s Anet library network. You will find the inventories of the business and family archives in specially added PDFs. The manuscripts of the museum are described in the 'Catalogue des manuscrits' by Jan Denucé (1927). Please click here for the catalogue in pdf.
Print Cabinet online
The Print Cabinet has a rich collection of old drawings and prints from Antwerp’s masters from the 16th to the 18th century. In addition, it collects modern and contemporary work by Antwerp artists. Rubens, Breughel, Tuymans and Panamarenko lie side by side in the depots. The Print Cabinet holds more than 75,000 objects.
Archives
UNESCO included the archives of the Officina Plantiniana in its Memory of the World list of intangible cultural heritage of humanity. This recognition by UNESCO internationally establishes that this business and family archive is vital for the cultural history of humanity.
