Jesi Printing Museum

The Museum of Printing Arts of Jesi was established in 2000 to document the long and important typographical tradition of the city which first saw the birth, in the Marche region, of a typography and, at the same time, the printing of one of the first editions of the Divina Comedy, in 1472, by the typographer Federico de 'Conti. The museum is housed in the sixteenth-century Palazzo Pianetti Vecchio and develops into a large and bright hall where, in an evocative setting with great visual effect, presses and printing machines from various eras are exhibited together with rare and valuable books. Therefore, the museum itinerary highlights and deepens the two aspects that characterize the invention that changed the history of human knowledge: typographic machinery and books as a final product. The volumes on display trace the history of the printed book from the incunabula to beautiful examples of the nineteenth century, through their extrinsic characters: title page, format, ornate initials, typographical marks, bindings and illustrations. Among these it should be emphasized the presence of some Aldine editions, some examples of a rare collection of notices and gazettes and almanacs, a splendid example of the Bodonian edition of the Iliad of 1808 and others.

The presses, the printing machines, the typographic tools such as composites, advantages, matrices, an interesting collection of movable type preserved in the original cases trace the history of printing from a technological point of view, from flat printing with an 18th century wooden press to the flat-cylindrical one, from the manual composition with movable type to the mechanical one with the linotype.

The material on display is all of local origin: in fact the presses, machinery and typographical tools are from printers from Jesi or neighboring countries. The Museum of Printing Arts is a lively, dynamic museum and has great potential; some typographic and art printing presses, with the relative equipment, are functional and are made available to both schools, for which educational workshops are offered, and to those who approach the knowledge of typographic or printing techniques of ancient art (xylography, intaglio and lithography).

The museum also preserves the archives of the printing houses from which the machinery on display comes. These archives are consulted by students and scholars and are an inexhaustible documentary source of news relating to public, political and social life and private activities, linked to more than 100 years of history, and more.