Vilnius

Vilnius enters the record in 1323, when Grand Duke Gediminas wrote from his capital to the cities of Germany and to the Pope, inviting merchants, craftsmen and monks to settle. Legend adds a dream of an iron wolf howling on a hill, which told him to build a city there, and the wolf still appears on tourist stalls. The site is real: a wooden castle stood on the hill above the meeting of the Vilnia and the Neris, and its brick tower is the one you climb today. At that time Lithuania was the last pagan state in Europe, and it ruled a huge territory that reached almost to the Black Sea.

In 1387 Lithuania accepted Catholic baptism under Grand Duke Jogaila, who had joined Poland by marriage a year earlier, and the first cathedral rose on the site of a pagan temple. The union of Lublin in 1569 made Poland and Lithuania a single commonwealth, and Vilnius became its second city. It was rich, multi-lingual and multi-faith: Catholics, Orthodox, Protestants, Jews and Muslims lived here, and the university that the Jesuits founded in 1579 taught in Latin and Polish. Baroque churches, built by Italian-trained architects in the 1600s and 1700s, give the Old Town its skyline.

The Third Partition of 1795 ended the commonwealth and gave Vilnius to Russia. Tsarist rule closed the university after the uprising of 1831 and banned printing in the Lithuanian language in Latin letters from 1864 to 1904. In the 20th century the city changed hands again and again: German occupation in the First World War, a brief independent Lithuania, then Polish control from 1920 to 1939 (the city was known as Wilno), a Soviet handover to Lithuania in October 1939, Soviet occupation in 1940, and Nazi occupation from 1941. Almost all of the Jewish community, some 90 per cent of Lithuania's Jews, was murdered, many at Paneriai forest outside the city. After 1944 came five decades of Soviet rule.

The recovery was quick and peaceful, and it began with singing. From 1988 the Sąjūdis movement filled squares with people, and on 23 August 1989 about two million people joined hands in a chain from Tallinn to Vilnius, called the Baltic Way. Lithuania declared independence on 11 March 1990, the first Soviet republic to do so. In January 1991 Soviet troops stormed the TV Tower and killed 14 civilians; the tower and the parliament are memorials now. Lithuania joined NATO and the EU in 2004 and the euro in 2015.

The shape of Vilnius is easy to hold in your head if you start from the water. The Neris is the larger river and flows east to west along the north of the centre; the small Vilnia, called the Vilnelė in the city, joins it from the south-east and loops around the eastern edge of the Old Town. Gediminas Hill stands where they meet, and the cathedral sits at its foot. From that point the Old Town spreads south and south-west in a tangle of streets that follow the medieval lines.

There are two main spines. Pilies street runs from Cathedral Square south to Town Hall Square, and continues as Didžioji street to the Gates of Dawn at the southern edge of the Old Town. It is the tourist road, lined with amber shops and cafés, and it is busiest between 11:00 and 17:00. The other spine is Gedimino Avenue, a wide boulevard built in the 19th century that runs west from the cathedral to Lukiškės Square and the parliament. It has the shops, the museums and larger hotels, and it marks the start of the New Town.

Two neighbourhoods sit off the spines. Užupis, across the Vilnelė to the east, is a small district of former workshops and wooden houses that artists took over in the 1990s and that declared itself a republic on 1 April 1997. It is very quiet and is best on foot in the afternoon. To the north of the Neris, Šnipiškės has old wooden houses at the foot of glass office towers, and it is the part of the city that has changed most in 30 years.

For a visitor the useful fact is scale. The main sights fit in a box about 2 km across, and the walk from the cathedral to the Gates of Dawn is about 1.5 km. Outside the box, buses and trolleybuses serve the suburbs and the TV Tower. The airport is about 6 km south of the centre and a train links it to the central station in a few minutes. The railway and bus stations sit together just south of the Old Town, about a 15-minute walk from the Gates of Dawn.

Vilnius has a reputation as a Baroque city, and it earns it. The Italian-influenced Baroque of the 1600s and 1700s is visible in dozens of church facades, from the domed interiors of St Casimir's to the white stucco figures of St Peter and St Paul, where more than 2,000 sculptures cover the walls and ceiling. But the city is a layer cake. Under the Baroque is Gothic brick, over it is neoclassical restoration, and around it are Soviet concrete blocks and modern glass.

Gothic brick is the oldest visible layer. St Anne's Church, finished in the early 1500s, is the best example: a single small church in the flamboyant Gothic style with 33 different kinds of brick, and legend says that Napoleon, passing through in 1812, wanted to carry it back to Paris in his hand. Beside it stands the large Bernardine church, a fortress-like building of the same period. The Gates of Dawn, the last of nine gates in the city wall, come from the same century.

The neoclassical layer belongs to the late 1700s. After a fire and a long decline, the architect Laurynas Gucevičius rebuilt the cathedral in a Greek temple style between 1783 and 1801, and he redesigned the Town Hall on the same lines. The result is a city where a severe white portico with columns looks out over a square of soft-coloured Baroque houses. The freestanding bell tower of the cathedral was a defensive tower before it was a belfry.

The other layer is the Soviet one, and it is best seen outside the Old Town: the concrete apartment blocks of Lazdynai, the TV Tower, and the KGB building on Gedimino Avenue, which was built in the 1890s as a court and became a Soviet prison. Modern Vilnius adds glass towers in Šnipiškės and a growing set of restored courtyards in the Old Town, where a gate on the main street leads to a quiet square with a café.

Before 1941, Vilnius was known in Jewish culture as Vilna, and the Jerusalem of the North. Jewish families settled here from the 14th century, and by the 1900s they made up about 40 per cent of the city's population, with more than 100 synagogues and prayer houses, a Yiddish theatre, printers and schools. It was a centre of rabbinic learning under the Vilna Gaon in the 1700s, and in 1925 the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research was founded here to study Yiddish culture. A visitor today walks streets where Yiddish was spoken in the shops.

The Jewish quarter lay around Vokiečių, Žydų and Gaono streets in the Old Town, just south-west of Town Hall Square. In 1941 the occupying German forces and their local collaborators confined the Jewish population in two ghettos in this area, and in the next three years nearly all of them were killed, many at Paneriai (Ponar) in the forest about 10 km south-west of the city, where a memorial and a small museum now stand. About 90 per cent of Lithuania's Jews died in the Holocaust, one of the highest rates in Europe. The Great Synagogue was damaged in the war and demolished under Soviet rule, and a school stands on the site.

Today Vilnius keeps this history in a quiet way. The Vilna Gaon Jewish State Museum has an exhibition, and its Green House branch tells the story of the Holocaust in Lithuania. The only working synagogue in the city, the Choral Synagogue of 1903, is on Pylimo street and is open for services. Plaques mark the ghetto gates, and the streets in the former ghetto are worth walking with a guide who can explain what stood where.

For a respectful visit, book a guided walk if you can, since few sites are labelled in detail, and allow a morning for Paneriai. Do not treat the memorial forest as a photo stop. Lithuania has been working on how it remembers the Holocaust, and the debate is still open, so a listening approach is best. The visit sits well beside the KGB museum, which tells the next part of the same story.

Lithuanian food is built on potatoes, rye bread, pork, dairy, beetroot and a lot of dill, and its best dishes are large and warm. The national dish is cepelinai: a big oval potato dumpling, shaped like a zeppelin (which is where the name comes from), stuffed with minced meat or curd and served with sour cream and bacon sauce. It is filling, so eat one and skip the starter. Other classics are bulviniai blynai (potato pancakes), kugelis (a baked potato pudding with bacon), balandėliai (cabbage rolls) and koldūnai (small dumplings).

In summer the dish everyone photographs is šaltibarščiai, a cold beet soup made with kefir and cucumber that turns bright pink and comes with a plate of hot boiled potatoes. In winter people eat thick soups, smoked meat and pickles. Kepta duona, fried rye bread with garlic and cheese sauce, is the classic beer snack, and every bar has it. Halės market hall has smoked cheese, cured meats and honey, and the stalls will slice what you point at.

Lithuania has a strong beer culture, from farmhouse ales made with wild yeast in the north to a new wave of craft brewers, and in the Old Town, cellar taprooms have 10 to 20 taps. The classic local drinks also include gira (kvass, a low-alcohol fermented rye drink), midus (mead), and herbal spirits such as a 40-herb liqueur that tastes of pine and pepper. Note the rules: the legal age to buy alcohol is 20, drinking in the street is fined, and shops sell alcohol only in restricted hours, so buy in the afternoon.

The café scene is a quiet success. Independent roasters, bakeries and brunch places have spread from the Old Town to Užupis and the New Town over the last ten years, and a flat white costs about €3. Canteens serve a Lithuanian lunch for under €8, and lunch menus at restaurants are cheaper than dinner. A sit-down dinner in the Old Town is more expensive than a canteen but still a fraction of the price in Copenhagen or Stockholm. Book dinner on Friday and Saturday.

On 1 April 1997, a group of artists and residents in the run-down district across the Vilnelė declared themselves the Republic of Užupis (the name means across the river). It began as a joke and has lasted. The republic has a president, a flag that changes with the seasons, an anthem, a small army of a dozen people and a constitution in 41 articles, which are printed on mirrored plaques on Paupio street in dozens of languages. Some are funny (a dog has the right to be a dog, and a cat is not obliged to love its owner) and some are serious (everyone has the right to be happy, and everyone has the right to make mistakes).

Behind the joke is a real change. In the 1990s Užupis was a poor district of empty workshops and poor housing, with a reputation for being rough. Artists moved in for the cheap rents and the river, and the district has become one of the most desirable in the city. The Angel of Užupis, a small bronze statue raised on a column in 2002, blows a trumpet over the main square and is the symbol of the neighbourhood. On the first of April the republic holds a parade and a border-crossing ceremony, and a passport stamp is sometimes offered (check).

The wider city has changed in step. Vilnius has become a tech and services hub, with fintech and start-up offices along the Neris, and its population is young and international. The glass towers of Šnipiškės sit across the river from the Old Town. Basketball is close to a national religion, and a match at the arena in the season is an easy way to meet locals. Cinema, jazz and classical music festivals fill the calendar, and the city has an active club scene that starts late.

For a visitor the point is to see this side of Vilnius as well as the churches. Spend an afternoon in Užupis, walk along Paupio street to the Constitution wall, stop for a coffee at a riverside café, and then cross the small bridge to the Bernardine Garden. Ask the people at the café what is worth seeing, and remember that these are residential streets: keep your voice down in the evening and do not photograph people's doors.