Mainz - Bischöfliches Dom- und Diözesanmuseum

Mainz was founded around 20 BC by the Romans under the name “Mogontiacum” as a military camp. Today's capital of the state of Rhineland-Palatinate forms a metropolitan area with Wiesbaden, the neighboring capital of Hesse, with a combined population of around 500,000.

The "Republic of Mainz", a product of the French Revolution, was the first democratic state on German territory. The state was represented in Paris by the naturalist Georg Forster, who had been in the Pacific with Captain Cook as a boy. The Mainz Republic ended after only five months in July 1793 following the conquest of the city by Prussian and Austrian troops. Georg Forster died in Paris in 1794.

Founded in 1925, the Cathedral Museum houses in its historic rooms – the Staufer vaulted halls, the two-story late Gothic cloister and the former chapter houses – works of art from two millennia that once belonged to the furnishings of Mainz Cathedral or the churches of the diocese.



The sculpture of John the Baptist, along with the figures of the apostles, belonged to the so-called "Großes Mainzer Weltgericht" (Great Mainz Last Judgment), which was part of the western rood screen of the Cathedral. Only fragments of the original screen survive today. The screen was created around 1240 by the so-called Naumburg Master, who had acquired his skills on the construction sites of the great French cathedrals in Noyen, Metz, and especially Reims.