The Official Gateway of Lithuania

If you visit its different regions you will soon discover that although being relatively small, Lithuania is a very diverse country. Our ever changing history has added a variety of different features and flavours to the Lithuanian culture and heritage. Having arrived here you will definitely see, feel, hear and experience a little bit of everything from different times and epochs.

The best example is Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania. This town, with a population of over half a million, takes pride in hundred-year-old trees, impressive wooden buildings built back in the old ages, manors scrupulously protected and preserved to this date, residences of famous noblemen, churches with steeples reaching to the sky, monasteries under a veil of mystery, mounds and barrows and, certainly, much more modern architecture of the past and present centuries. This is typical of the whole Lithuania, only not so compactly, yet more vividly and visibly than in the capital. So, join us for a cultural heritage sightseeing trip around Lithuania, starting with the four of our historical capitals.

KERNAVĖ

TRAKAI

Another site worth mentioning is the Trakai Historical National Park recognised by international standards as one of the most valuable landscapes of Lithuania, which makes Trakai attractive not only to admirers of castles. Trakai is also called the capital of Lithuanian Karaites: the town has been home to the Karaite community for over 600 years; this religious community owns hundred-year-old dwelling and praying houses here and has two cemeteries, the old and the new one.

Before leaving Trakai, do not miss out on visiting the nearby Tiškevičiai residence, the Užutrakis Manor, surrounded by a park designed by the famous French landscape architect and horticulturalist Édouard François André in the end of the 19th century. The idea of the design reflected the then European trends of garden art. This world-famous artist has also designed manor parks in Palanga, Lentvaris and Trakų Vokė.

KAUNAS

When you have had enough of walking, try the funicular constructed in the interwar period – although reconstructed, the vehicles look exactly as in 1931 – and enjoy, while going up or down, the sounds of music by Lithuanian composer Giedrius Kuprevičius, reminding of the interwar Kaunas.

Before leaving Kaunas, make a stop to enjoy the view of the Pažaislis Monastery and Church built in the 17th–18th century by Italian artists. It is considered to be one of the best examples of the middle Baroque in Northern and Eastern Europe.

VILNIUS

Construction has been going on in the capital since then, reflecting changing styles, trends and currents. For instance, Gothic brick buildings were very popular in the 15th and 16th centuries, as manifested by Franciscan, Dominican and Bernadine monasteries, modern buildings of merchants’ guilds, and orthodox churches. But the Gothic town that grew so rapidly was devastated by fire in 1471. In the 1st quarter of the 16th century, Vilnius turned to Renaissance that flourished until the middle of the 17th century.

In 1570, Jesuits opened the first college and library in Vilnius. In 1579, the college was transformed into the University of Vilnius, which offers studies until today. As the central cradle of culture in the region, it had a tremendous cultural and educational influence on the neighbouring states – many prominent personalities who have left a footprint in the cultural domain of Lithuania and Poland lectured or studied there.

The middle Baroque style is best revealed in Vilnius by the St. Peter’s and St. Paul’s Church, the first bricks of which were laid in 1668 to an order of one of the most prominent Lithuanian noblemen of the 17th century, Mykolas Kazimieras Pacas (Michał Kazimierz Pac). The interior of the Church is decorated by nearly 2,000 stucco statutes and a sea of Baroque symbols and images.

In the end of the 18th century, two most important public buildings were born: the City Hall and the Cathedral, both designed by the prominent architect Laurynas Stuoka-Gucevičius in the Classicism style.

For the authentic network of streets formed in the medieval period and several hundreds of historical buildings in the Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque, Classicism and the 19th century Romanticism styles, Vilnius Old Town was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1994, which recognised Vilnius Old Town as a representative example of several important periods of history reflecting the organic evolution of a town in Central Europe over five centuries. The Lithuanian capital is a perfect example of a medieval town which has been a political, administrative, religious and cultural centre of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and Eastern Europe between the 13th and the 18th centuries and the hub of science and education since the 16th century.

THE REST OF LITHUANIA

To take a fresh breath off a noisy city, visit Lithuanian villages, famous for their special architecture with predominantly wooden houses.

If you take interest in old crafts, you must visit the old Musteika Village in Dzūkija, where centuries-old beekeeping traditions are still alive. Several beekeepers in the village still keep bees in the old manner – in log beehives. Also, a number of pine-trees with cavities in which bees nested in the past have been preserved in the woods surrounding the village.

Dieveniškės, another site of attraction, is special in its hundred-year-old ribbon villages – Žižmai, Rimašiai, Poškonys and smaller ones squeezed in between forests.

Fragments of completely different villages have survived in Lithuania Minor, the Klaipėda region. Flood-meadows of the Nemunas delta were home to hayfielders, who were predominantly engaged in pasturing and hay-making rather than land cultivating. Drained wetlands served home for wetlanders, who grew potatoes and other vegetables in moors. Fishermen lived on river banks; parts of their villages still remain on the Rusnė Island. Some fragments of a seaside fishermen’s village have survived in Karklė (Karklininkai). Dreverna Village and settlements in the Curonian Spit still have old homesteads of Curonian Lagoon fishermen.

In Lithuanian villages, you will see not only old wooden dwelling houses but also wooden churches. One of the most impressive ones is the triangular wooden church of St. Vincent Ferrero in Degučiai Village (in the district of Šilutė), the only surviving church of this kind in Europe. More of wooden Baroque churches can be found in Eastern Lithuania, but the most beautiful and oldest ones survived in Žemaitija, the sacral wooden heritage of which was awarded the European Heritage Label.

The Lithuanian seaside takes pride in its cultural landscape of extraordinary beauty enhanced by the view of old fishermen villages. Most of them are situated on the Curonian Spit, a narrow elongated sandy strip of land separating the Curonian Lagoon from the Baltic Sea. Houses in the old villages face the Lagoon at their backs, their roofs are covered with straw or red tiles and facades painted in blue or light brown. Their value has been recognised by inscribing them as natural and cultural heritage on the UNESCO List of Cultural and Natural Heritage of the World.

A villa of Thomas Mann, a famous German writer and a Nobel Prize laureate, has survived in Nida. It serves as a venue for the international Thomas Mann festival that is held every year in the end of July.

Let’s go back to Klaipėda, also known as Memel since 1252. Klaipėda has been known since the 13th century as one of the most buoyant export ports on the Baltic Sea, a hub of defence and maritime trade. The old industrial buildings of Paul Lindenau’s shipyard that operated in the beginning of the 20th century have survived and are still in use. Special value is attributed to the still-functioning turning iron bridge built in 1855 to connect Klaipdėda’s Old Town and the territory of the former shipyard. And last but not least, Klaipėda’s inseparable symbol – lighting-houses built in the Neogothic style in the 19th century on the coast of the Curonian Lagoon in Ventė, Pervalka and Uostadvaris.