Open Monument Day Mainz

About this event

Open Monument Day in Mainz gathers dozens of sites that are usually off limits into a single Sunday programme. From the Alter Dom St. Johannis, where recent archaeology uncovered the city’s earliest bishop’s church with a crypt dating back over a thousand years, to the vast Roman theatre that once held more than 10,000 spectators, you can join hourly guided tours and talks across the city. Highlights include the Renaissance Domus Universitatis, now home to the Leibniz Institute of European History, which offers short lectures on Jesuit school networks and a film about the building’s 400-year past. The Erthaler Hof invites visitors to gild walnuts, make key rings from old window profiles, and peek inside its historic building-material collection. Families with kids about 4–12 are well catered for with rally trails at the Alter Dom, a children‘s quiz at the Erthaler Hof, and hands-on craft stations tucked into several venues. Architecture buffs can join a 90‑minute campus walk tracing the post-war buildings at Johannes Gutenberg University, or explore the 1920s Neutorschule with its old swimming pool. The main cemetery opens its neo-baroque crematorium – usually locked – for guided looks inside, and in the late afternoon a postcolonial neighbourhood walk through the Neustadt asks what colonial traces remain in street names and the Zollhafen. The Zitadelle pulls the day together with an open-air festival, old-timer vehicles, and a reenactment group, while the Pulverhof – the city’s oldest dwelling, recently restored with clay and wood‑fibre insulation – shows a quieter side of sustainable conservation. Everything is free, run by volunteers of the Deutsche Stiftung Denkmalschutz and a wide network of local associations.

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