Foligno was one of the first Italian cities to have a typography. Located in the ancient Palazzo Orfini, the Printing Museum (Museo della Stampa) collects evidence on the production of paper and publishing industry in from the fifteenth century to the present day. The late fifteenth-century palace was the ancient home of the Orfini family, rich papal officers of the Mint, and hosted the printing house. Johannes Numeister, a pupil of Gutemberg, worked here and the first edition of Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy was printed here in 1472. On the ground floor there is a section dedicated to the production of paper in Foligno, a relevant production thanks to the abundance of water in the area (from the first paper mills to today), and the prototype of a fifteenth-century printing press.<\/p>\n
On the third floor you can retrace the stages of the evolution of printing industry in Foligno: from papers with watermarks to matrices. The exhibition displays the fifteenth-century editions of the Orfini Numeister prototypography and, to follow, commendations, epithalamus, doctorates, monacations and newspapers published in the city. In the Sala dei Lunari an overview of lunar and almanacs, especially the one by the famous Barbanera (Blackbeard). Finally, in the Loggia dei Trinci, entirely frescoed with monochromes that tell the history of the founding myth of the family and the origins of the city, there is a section dedicated to the printers present in the city between the 16th and 19th centuries.<\/p>\n<\/div>