German Museum of Books and Writing

The German Museum of Books and Writing (DBSM) in Leipzig was founded in 1884 as the German Book Trade Museum and is the oldest specialist museum of its kind. Today it forms part of the German National Library on Deutscher Platz and presents 5,500 years of writing and book history - from Mesopotamian clay tablets through parchment manuscripts to the Gutenberg Bible and industrial presses. The collection holds around one million objects, from watermarked papers to lead-type sets. The permanent exhibition "Signs - Books - Networks" is free to enter. A must for anyone more drawn to printing history than to reading itself.