We spent a few days in Vilnius at the end of October. Rather late in the tourist season, but the city was still open for business. It was a very good experience. Vilnius is one of the friendliest and cleanest places I have visited. Definitely on the “recommended” list. Here are some assorted notes from what we saw.
The Airport
Vilnius Airport honestly might give a poor first impression of the city. Due to the small size of our plane, we did not get a jetway but had to take a bus to the terminal, giving us a good view of the quite small terminal from the aircraft side. After retrieving our luggage, the arrivals side looked like a small-town train station. It featured a single kiosk where you could buy bus tickets to get downtown – which was what we needed.
However… just look at the front of the building! It is wonderful! Such a classic 1930s design. Those statues with aeronautical themes!
Getting back to the kiosk. Transit from the airport to the town is the cheapest I have ever seen. Less than a Euro to take a city bus straight to Vilnius downtown. Prague comes close, but this is unbeatable.
To be fair, the departure side is fully modern, hidden behind the old 1930s airport building. Some decent shops there, even if buying souvenirs is about twice as expensive as in downtown.
The City
In some ways, Vilnius is a prototypical old central European city. There is a river running through the centre with an old castle on a hill overlooking it. There are old churches, an old town, and monuments.
North of the river, there are quite a few skyscrapers that give a true big city feeling, especially at night.
The main landmark in Vilnius is Gediminas Tower, dating back to the 1300s and the founding of the city. It houses an exhibition about the history of the castle. There is some about its old history, but also includes quite a bit of modern history.
A memorial to the Baltic Way, as well as excavations of graves after the Russian suppression of the revolt in 1867 when the tower was part of the Russian garrison in Vilnius. You can take a photo of yourself with some cardboard cutouts showing people from the time, making yourself part of the Baltic Way.
The old town is lovely and full of cafes, souvenir shops, and restaurants. There are remnants of the old city wall in the east at the Bastion and north at the Gates of Dawn (which contains a supposedly miraculous renaissance painting that has been visited by two popes!).
The Cathedral is a fantastic neoclassical building, but its tower is arguably more interesting as it dates back more than 600 years. Over the centuries, it was converted from a defensive tower into a bell tower. Today, you can climb the rather scary stairs to get a wonderful view of Vilnius downtown. Opening hours were generous, only closing at 20.00 even in the low season.
The city contains layers of history. In addition to the really old town, there are also some remnants of the Soviet era. The opera and ballet house is still in use, while the old concert and sports stadium stands unused amid a complicated discussion involving the fact that it is standing on ground that was once the Vilnius Jewish cemetery. The opera house is really quite a nice 1960s building that very much reminds me of buildings from the same era in Finland and Sweden.
One great find was the Vilnius Museum of Illusions, “vilnil”. Not the biggest museum, but well worth an hour or two. Many great opportunities for great photos and just amazement at a range of visual illusions (and few tactile ones).
Helpful and Warm
The general feeling we got from Vilnius was as already mentioned very positive. People were helpful and happy to point tourists in the right direction. The city was noticeably clean compared to pretty much any other big city I have visited. There was also some sense of humor… like this t-shirt:
Speaking of English, one thing that was striking was that the older generation working in shops and museums did not have the best English skills. I guess they grew up in Soviet times and learned Russian in school. The younger generation is obviously.
History
Lithuania is a country with a long and proud history that has been reduced to a sliver of its former self in the past 300 years or so. Vilnius was one of the central cities in the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth that once stretched from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea. In 1795 the third partition of Poland put what is today’s Lithuania under Russian rule. There was a brief period of independence from 1917 to 1939, but even then the Vilnius part of the country was occupied by Poland (I had no idea).
Today’s Vilnius is very much colored by this history. Just like Berlin tends to talk Nazis and the Cold War, Vilnius tends to talk about the Soviet occupation or the Tsarist Russian oppression of Lithuanian nationality.
The majority of Lithuanians very much see themselves as part of Western Europe. The country is a member of NATO and the European Union, and they use Euros.
This photo shows Lukiskes square in central Vilnius, note the very typical arrangement of flags: Lithuanian, Ukrainian, and the European Union. Displaying both the European identity and support for Ukraine. The building in the background is a courthouse today but used to be the KGB headquarters during the occupation from 1944 to 1990.
Relationship to Russia
The museums we visited the guided tours we took all touched on the history of oppression under Tsarist Russian and Soviet rule. Even when talking about the more distant past, something always comes up that brings back more recent issues. For example, how the quite wonderful cathedral was used as a museum in Soviet times. Or how the Russian empire converted Catholic churches into Orthodox churches. It is inescapable, as Lithuanian identity has basically been defined as keeping their distinct culture alive under pressure from the empire.
The courthouse building on Lukiskes Square also houses a museum that covers the KGB machine that was present in Vilnius during the Soviet times. It is a bit like the Stasi museum in Berlin, but smaller in scale. The oppression documented is very similar in structure. The basement displays some of the prison and torture cells used by the KGB.
Right next to parliament (the Seimas), this outdoor exhibition shows a part of the barricade that surrounded the building as a defense against a Soviet invasion until as late as 1992! That is very recent history, and it easy to understand why Lithuania has a big problem with their big neighbor.
This display is another indication: it is a count-down clock to the day (February 8, 2025) when the grid in the three Baltic countries will finally be synchronized with the continental European electricity grid (and leave the connection with Russia and Belarus).
Support Ukraine!
Given the history of the city and the country of Lithuania, it is not surprising that the support for Ukraine in the current war is massive. There were Ukrainian flags everywhere, along with signs for support of Ukraine. The comparisons between what is going on today in the Ukraine with what Lithuania experienced under the Soviet invasions in 1939 and 1944, as well as the oppression until independence and the Soviet moves against their independence in 1990 to 1992 are obvious.
This was written on a skyscraper in the business district north of the river.
When taking a tour of the old Likuskes Prison the guide said that they actually still had one prisoner around (the prison was used until 2019, but is now a cultural hub)… Honestly, seeing a Putin dummy in a cell was kind of expected. Who else could it have been?
All city buses displayed a message of support for Ukraine, between showing their destination.