Holiday in Vilnius -- mid-May 2003

MID-MAY HOLIDAY IN VILNIUS, LITHUANIA

The travel company which took us to Tallinn last September offered Vilnius this May; clearly, it was time to start collecting Baltic capitals. The package (and the price) was similar -- out on Friday evening, back on Monday afternoon -- and again not quite long enough to see all that the city offered. Here, nevertheless, are some photographs, beginning with a view over the baroque Old Town, looking south in mid-afternoon from Gediminas Tower in the High Castle:

The Old Town's largely unaltered baroque character is responsible for its inclusion on the UNESCO World Heritage list; as the above photograph shows, it's a low-rise agglomeration of church cupolas, steep roofs and trees. On closer inspection, it looks a little shabby; as one of our guides explained, this is one of the legacies of the Soviet period, when little or nothing was spent on civic maintenance. In the early post-Soviet years, too, when there was still some uncertainty whether Lithuania's independence would progress from de facto to de jure, it remained difficult to attract foreign investment; but the country is now both a NATO candidate member and an EU accession state, and money is beginning to arrive.

The exact date of Vilnius's foundation is unknown. Legend has it that Grand Duke Gediminas, out hunting one day in 1323, fell asleep next to a hill at the confluence of the rivers Neris and Vilnia and had a dream of an iron wolf which his seer interpreted as instructions to build castles at both the top and the foot of the hill; archaeological evidence, however, shows that the site was occupied at least as early as the first century CE. Lithuania itself did not exist as a nation until early in the second millennium CE; it was first mentioned by name in the Quedlinberg Annals of 1009 in connection with a Christianising mission led by St Boniface (which, as with many other Christianising missions to the Balts of that period, ended with the martyrdom of its participants -- Lithuania was the last country in Europe to be fully converted). Under attack by the Teutonic Knights from 1225 onwards, the Lithuanian tribes were moulded into a nation by 1240 under Duke Mindaugas, the last pagan ruler of the country; under the rule of Gediminas "the Great", and his successors, the country reached the zenith of its power and extent: in 1413, it extended from Palanga on the Baltic to the mouths of the Dnieper and Dnester rivers on the Black Sea, with its eastern border only 100 kilometres from Moscow. Subsequent intermarriage with the Polish royal family led to first alliance and then full union with Poland in 1569. For the next one hundred years the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth arbitrated political affairs in Eastern Europe, even saving Western Europe from Ottoman invasion at the Battle of Chocim in 1673, but disastrous military entanglements with Sweden and Russia meant that by the early eighteenth century the Commonwealth was in severe decline. The Partitioning of Poland in 1772, 1793 and 1795 saw the gradual annexation of Lithuania by Russia, which sought to eliminate the country's separate identity by renaming it "the Northwestern Region" (not wholly successfully: there were failed revolts in 1831 and 1863). Lithuania did not reappear as a (much smaller) independent nation until 1918, and even then frontier disputes with Poland meant that Vilnius remained under Polish control until the outbreak of the Second World War, when the Soviet Union restored it to Lithuania under the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.

But now some more photographs. Below are two views of Gediminas Tower, on the left from within the bounds of the High Castle itself and on the right from the Arsenal on the banks of the River Neris:

And below are two views of the (rather speculatively restored) remains of the High Castle's royal palace:

Two more views now from Gediminas Tower -- on the left, the view to the north-east, showing the River Neris and parts of the Arsenal (now home to the National Museum's Archaeological Exposition and the Museum of Applied Arts); and on the right, to the south-west, over Cathedral Square. The construction site in the foreground of the second picture is where the Renaissance-style royal palace of the Lower Castle, destroyed by the Russian tsars in 1802, is being rebuilt -- a rebuilding which ironically will re-inter the archaeological evidence for its existence:

Arsenal and River Neris from Gediminas Tower

So down from the High Castle and off into the Old Town we go, stopping first in Cathedral Square. The first church here, within the bounds of the Lower Castle, was erected in the thirteenth century, on the site of a shrine to the pagan god Perkunas; this was supplanted in the fifteenth century by an elaborate gothic cathedral which underwent repeated alterations until being almost totally rebuilt in its present form between 1783 and 1801. The statues above the pediment are modern copies of the 1792 originals, which were pulled down and destroyed by the Soviets in 1950. During the Soviet period, the cathedral was deconsecrated and used as an art gallery (a better fate than many of the other churches in the Old Town, which were used as warehouses and hence suffered much greater dilapidations).

Below these two photographs is one of the Belfry. The round lower tier, pierced by gunports, dates from the fourteenth century and is the sole surviving part of the Lower Castle's fortifications. It was converted into the cathedral's belfry by the addition of two further, octagonal tiers in the 1520s; a fourth tier was added in the following century to house the clock. The steeple was added in 1893.

Two more churches now -- the gothic church of St Anne on the left, and on the right (and right next to it) the sixteenth century brickwork church of Sts Francis and Bernardino. The interior of the latter (another warehouse during the Soviet period) is in a very poor state of repair; the former is reportedly the most celebrated building in all Lithuania, and one which according to tradition so captivated Napoleon that he declared a wish to take it back to Paris in the palm of his hand. Its exact origins are unknown: it was initially thought to have been constructed in the fifteenth century, but more recent work suggests that the facade is no older than the mid-sixteenth century. 33 different types of brick were used in its construction.

The University constitutes the largest and most prominent complex of buildings in Vilnius. Originally a college founded by the Jesuits as part of the Counter-Reformation, it was upgraded to a full university in 1579 -- although the Jesuits later objected to several of the subjects it taught (astronomy, anatomy, philosophy) on the grounds that they conflicted with church dogma, and closed many of its departments. The University was closed down altogether between 1832 and 1919, and during the Soviet period had to tailor its activities to another set of dogma (Marxist-Leninist). The photograph on the left (below) is of the Astronomical Observatory, founded in 1753 and the fourth oldest surviving example of its type in the world (but no longer in use). There is a frieze (regrettably not very visible in this picture) of zodiacal symbols between the windows.

Immediately adjacent to the University's Astronomical Observatory is the Presidential Palace. Originally a fourteenth century bishop's palace, the building was remodelled to serve as the residence of the Russian Governor-General in the tsarist period (both Tsar Alexander I and Napoleon held court there in 1812), then expanded and rebuilt in the Neo-Classical style between 1824 and 1832. In the Soviet era, it served as a Palace of Culture, and was briefly used as the French Embassy in the first years of independence; it assumed its present role in 1997. For a seat of government, there is an astonishing absence of the guards or other protection one might expect to see around a national leader; children bicycle freely through the plaza in front of the building, and our hotel overlooked the gardens behind it.

There are a number of Russian Orthodox churches in Vilnius. This is indicative both of the tsarist period, when -- especially after the failed revolt of 1863 -- Russia sought to impose its cultural values on Lithuania by, among other things, settling ethnic Russians in the country and forbidding the repair of Catholic churches, but also of Vilnius's long-standing multicultural nature (during the interwar period, for example, 40% of its inhabitants were Jewish, and Lithuanian was a minority language). The photograph below left shows the Piatnickaya Orthodox Church, built originally in 1345 for Marija, the wife of Grand Duke Algirdas (although its present appearance is a result of nineteenth century remodelling).

The photograph below right is of the Town Hall, built between 1781 and 1799 on the site of its medieval predecessor. The building is now used mostly for civic receptions, the actual municipal offices having long since outgrown the accommodation. (The sky looks more dramatic than it actually was.)

Very little of the city's old defensive walls survive -- most of those which did not fall into desuetude during the eighteenth century were removed by the Russians following the 1831 revolt as part of a tsarist campaign to eliminate Lithuanian historical memory. One part which did survive was the Gate of Dawn, one of the nine gates which Vilnius formerly possessed, and that only because the interior had been revamped in Neo-Classical style in 1829 to provide a chapel for a supposedly miraculous image of the Virgin Mary. The photographs below show the Gate from both inside (on the left) and outside (on the right). Below them is a photograph of the sole surviving artillery bastion, built in the early seventeenth century to provide additional defence for the nearby Subacius Gate.

I mentioned earlier that money was beginning to arrive for civic restoration. One odd but interesting feature of this is the removal of patches of stucco on some of the older buildings to reveal otherise invisible architectural features -- as in the wall of the house below, in Bernardinu Street:

We also made a trip outside Vilnius, to Trakai Historical National Park. Now a small country town, Trakai's foundation dates back to the twelfth century, when it was the capital of one of the duchies into which medieval Lithuania was divided, and may have served as the country's capital for a few years during the reign of Grand Duke Gediminas. It is most noted now for the spectacular Island Castle in Lake Galve, which dates from the medieval period but was ruined in mid-seventeenth century wars with the Russians -- although its isolated setting meant that it fared better than others of the country's ruined castles. Plans to rebuild it were first made in the late nineteenth century, and eventually realised during the Soviet period between 1951 and 1962 -- a bizarre timing for the project given that the castle is most closely associated with Grand Duke Vytautas, who led a combined Polish-Lithuanian army to victory over the Teutonic Knights at the Battle of Grunwald in 1410, ending the Knights' 185-year Baltic crusade and securing Lithuania's independence.

The first photograph below is of the castle from the shores of Lake Galve. The next two are of the bailey of the outer ward from the drawbridge to the inner ward, and of the tower of the royal palace from the bailey. (Regrettably, the public are no longer permitted to climb to the top of the tower, otherwise we'd have photographed the castle from there too.) The rebuilt parts are in brick, and so readily distinguishable from the original stonework.

Finally, just to show that holidays aren't all about history and culture, here's a photograph of Judith with the various souvenirs we brought back -- matroshka dolls, miniature pots for the dolls-houses, wooden kitchen implements, and some dust-gathering wooden ornaments:

Web page created 27 May 2003 by Joseph Nicholas.
Text and photographs copyright 2003 by Joseph Nicholas.

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