Sights in Kaunas
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Pažaislis Monastery
This fine example of 17th-century baroque architecture is 9km east of the centre, near the shores of Kaunas Sea (Kauno marios), a large artificial lake created by damming the Nemunas.
The monastery church with its 50m-high cupola and sumptuous Venetian interior made from pink and black Polish marble is a sumptuous if shabby affair. Passing from Catholic to Orthodox to Catholic control, the monastery has a chequered history and was a psychiatric hospital for part of the Soviet era. Nuns inhabit it today. The best time to visit is between June and August during the Pažaislis Music Festival (www.pazaislis.lt). Take trolleybus 5, 9 or 12 to the terminus on Masiulio gatvė, a f…
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Museum of Deportation & Resistance
The Museum of Deportation & Resistance documents the spirit of Resistance encompassed by the partisan Forest Brothers, who fought against Soviet occupation. Led by Jonas Žemaitis-Vytautas (1909-54), 100,000 men went into Lithuania's forests to battle the tyrannical regime. One-third were killed, the rest captured and deported. Fighting continued until 1954 when the last partisan was shot.
One of the most desperate anti-Soviet actions was the suicide of Kaunas student Romas Kalanta. On 14 May 1972 he doused himself in petrol and set fire to himself in protest at tyrannical communist rule. A suicide note was found in his diary explaining why.
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Aukštieji Šančiai Cemetery
Holds the bodies of beloved Lithuanian pilots Steponas Darius and Stanislovas Girėnas who died on 15 July 1933, 650km short of completing the longest nonstop trans-Atlantic flight.
Two days after the duo set off from New York, 25,000 people gathered at Kaunas airport for their triumphant return. They never arrived. Their orange plane Lituanica crashed in Germany; see the wreckage in the Military Museum of Vytautas the Great. After being embalmed, then hidden during Soviet occupation, the bodies came to rest here at in 1964.
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IX Fortas (Ninth Fort)
Some of the darkest moments of Lithuania's brutal history occurred here. The Ninth Fort was built on Kaunas' northwestern outskirts in the late 19th century to fortify the western frontier of the tsarist empire. During WWII the Nazis made it a death camp where some 80,000 people were butchered. Later Stalin's henchmen used it as a prison and execution site.
The museum has exhibits on the Nazi horrors against Jews, and also includes material on Soviet atrocities against Lithuanians.
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Sugihara House
Kaunas-based Japanese diplomat Chiune Sugihara (1900-86) saved 12,000 Jewish lives between 1939 and 1940, issuing transit visas to stranded Polish Jews who faced being forced into Soviet citizenship. When the Soviets annexed Lithuania and ordered all consulates be shut he asked for a short extension. Dubbed 'Japan's Schindler', he disobeyed orders for 29 days by signing 300 visas per day, and handed the stamp to a Jewish refugee when he left. Sugihara House tells his life story.
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Presidential Palace of Lithuania
The former Presidential Palace is where the country was run between 1920 and 1939. Restored to its original grandeur, the palace hosts a fascinating exhibition on independent interwar Lithuania. B&W photographs are interspersed with gifts for past presidents, silver collections and presidential awards. Statues of former presidents dot the palace garden.
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Laisvės alėja
Kaunas expanded east from the Old Town in the 19th century, giving birth to the modern centre and its striking 1.7km pedestrian street, Laisvės alėja. Also known as Freedom Avenue, it was legendary for years as one of the few strips where smoking was banned - until 2000 when city mayor Vytautas Sustauskas butted in and permitted puffing again.
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Statue of Maironis
In the square's southwestern corner is a statue of Maironis (1862-1932), a Kaunas priest called Jonas Mačiulis who was the poet behind Lithuania's late-19th- and early-20th-century nationalist revival. Stalin banned his works. From 1910 to 1932 Maironis lived in the house behind now what is the Maironis Lithuanian Literary Museum.
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Field of Sacrifice
Field of Sacrifice - a name engraved on paving slabs in front of the garden is a tragic (2002) tribute to the young Kaunas hero, Kaunas student Romas Kalanta. On 14 May 1972 he doused himself in petrol and set fire to himself in protest at tyrannical Soviet communist rule. A suicide note was found in his diary explaining why.
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National Čiurlionis Art Museum
The National Čiurlionis Art Museum is Kaunas' leading museum. It has extensive collections of the romantic paintings of Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis (1875-1911), one of Lithuania's greatest artists and composers, as well as Lithuanian folk art and 16th- to 20th-century European applied art.
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Kaunas Castle
A reconstructed tower, sections of wall, and part of a moat are all that remain of Kaunas Castle, around which the town originally grew. Founded in the 13th century, it was an important bastion of Lithuania's western borders.
Trolleybus 7 from the bus or train stations terminates at the castle site.
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St Peter & St Paul's Cathedral
St Peter & St Paul's Cathedral with its single tower owes much to baroque reconstruction, especially inside, but the original 15th-century Gothic shape of its windows remains. It was probably founded by Vytautas around 1410 and now has nine altars. The tomb of Maironis stands outside the south wall.
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Žaliakalnio funikulierius (Green Hill funicular)
As its name suggests, the Green Hill funicular glides up Green Hill. Above the top station towers Christ's Resurrection Basilica, a huge piece of history that took 70 years to build. A Nazi paper warehouse and radio factory under the Soviets, the church was finally consecrated in 2004.
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Military Museum of Vytautas the Great
The Military Museum of Vytautas the Great covers Lithuanian history from prehistoric times to the present day. Of particular interest is the wreckage of the aircraft in which Steponas Darius and Stasys Girėnas died while attempting to fly nonstop from New York to Kaunas in 1933.
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Choral Synagogue
Close to Laisvės alėja, a memorial at Kaunas' only operational Choral Synagogue remembers 1600 children killed at the Ninth Fort. The WWII Jewish ghetto was on the western bank of the Neris, in the area bounded by Jurbarko, Panerių and Demokratų streets.
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St Michael the Archangel Church
The Soviets turned the blue neo-Byzantine St Michael the Archangel Church, filling the skyline at the eastern end of Laisvės alėja, into a stained-glass museum. Built for the Russian Orthodox faith in 1895, the church was reopened to Catholic worshippers in 1991.
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St Gertrude Church
A gothic gem of a church is tucked in a courtyard off Laisvės alėja: St Gertrude Church was built in the late 15th century. Its red-brick crypt overflows with burning candles, prompting a separate candle shrine to be set up in a shed opposite the crypt entrance.
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Museum of Devils
Diabolical is the collection of 2000-odd devil statuettes in the Museum of Devils, collected by landscape artist Antanas Žmuidzinavičius (1876-1966). Note the satanic figures of Hitler and Stalin, formed from tree roots, performing a deadly dance over Lithuania.
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Christ's Resurrection Basilica
Above the top funicular station at the Green Hill Funicular towers Christ's Resurrection Basilica, a huge piece of history that took 70 years to build. A Nazi paper warehouse and radio factory under the Soviets, the church was finally consecrated in 2004.
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House of Perkūnas
Off the southeastern corner of Rotušės aikštė, the curious House of Perkūnas was built in red brick in the 16th century as trade offices on the site of a former temple to the Lithuanian thunder god, Perkūnas.
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Mykolas Žilinskas Art Gallery
The Mykolas Žilinskas Art Gallery boasts Lithuania's only Rubens. In the same square, Man, modelled on Nike the Greek god of victory, caused a storm of controversy when his glorious pose exposing his manhood was unveiled.
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Kaunas Musical Theatre
Independent Lithuania's first parliament convened in 1920 at the Kaunas Musical Theatre, the former State Theatre Palace overlooking City Garden (Miestos Sodas) at the western end of Laisvės alėja since 1892.
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Palace of Weddings
The 17th-century former town hall at Rotušės Aikštė is now a Palace of Weddings where brides and grooms say taip ('I do') on Saturday. In its cellar there is a small ceramics museum.
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Rotušės Aikštė
Soviet planners threatened to bulldoze a highway through this central square (they didn't) and its pretty 15th- and 16th-century German merchants' houses and 17th-century former town hall remain.
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Kaunas Technological University
Unity Sq houses both Kaunas Technological University which has 14,000 students, and the smaller Vytautas Magnus University, refounded in 1989 by an émigré Lithuanian.
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