Plantin was, after Daniel Bomberg, the outstanding 16th-century Christian printer of Hebrew books. By 1576 he operated 22 presses and was the leading printer-publisher of northern Europe. Following the "Spanish Fury" of 1576, he spent some years in France and Holland, eventually returning to Antwerp, where he died. His descendants maintained the press until 1875, when the Antwerp municipality transformed it into the present-day Plantin-Moretus Museum—a unique monument to Renaissance printing and publishing.