Christoffel Plantin set up in Antwerp as a bookbinder around 1549 but transferred his talents to the printing trade.  In no time at all that made him famous all over Western Europe.  In 1576 he moved into this building and called it “De Gulden passer", meaning the Golden Compass.  The compass was his logo and a symbol of his motto “labore et constantia”, meaning work and tenacity.

The museum as it is today is mainly the result of improvements carried out by Plantin’s grandson and most important successor,  Balthasar  I Moretus, in the 17th century.
The  “Officina Plantiniana” was the most famous printing works in Europe.  At the height of his carrier Christoffel Plantin  had no fewer than  16 presses, by way of comparison the largest French printing works had no more than four!  Plantin published some 1500 works and in all of the  languages used in Christendom. 
The Officina Plantiniana was an important center of humanism and learning.  Besides bibles and the first Dutch dictionary there were books on botany by Dodoens, atlases by Mercator and Ortelius, illustrated anatomical treaties by  Vesalius, music books and studies by humanists with Justus Lipsius as the most important.  Lipsius even had his own room in the Officina  Plantiniana.
That fame even rose to greater heights under Balthasar Moretus and his close cooperation with Rubens as an illustrator.  The printing works are still in a fairly authentic state.   The museum shows the whole book production process as it was in the old days and ninety percent of the enormous collection of books  printed by Plantin and the Moretusses.  The Golden Compass was the intellectual center of the Low Countries.