The Plan­tin-More­­tus Muse­um is a print­ing plant and pub­lish­ing house dat­ing from the Renais­sance and Baroque peri­ods. Sit­u­at­ed in Antwerp, one of the three lead­ing cities of ear­ly Euro­pean print­ing along with Paris and Venice, it is asso­ci­at­ed with the his­to­ry of the inven­tion and spread of typog­ra­phy. Its name refers to the great­est print­­er-pub­­lish­er of the sec­ond half of the 16th cen­tu­ry: Christophe Plan­tin (c. 1520–89). The mon­u­ment is of out­stand­ing archi­tec­tur­al val­ue. It con­tains exhaus­tive evi­dence of the life and work of what was the most pro­lif­ic print­ing and pub­lish­ing house in Europe in the late 16th cen­tu­ry. The build­ing of the com­pa­ny, which remained in activ­i­ty until 1867, con­tains a large col­lec­tion of old print­ing equip­ment, an exten­sive library, invalu­able archives and works of art, among them a paint­ing by Rubens.