Vilnius holds one of the largest surviving Baroque old towns in Central and Eastern Europe, its historic centre, recognised as a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1994, spans over 350 hectares, considerably larger than many visitors expect from a capital of Lithuania’s modest size. That Baroque character developed substantially through the 17th and 18th centuries under the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, one of early modern Europe’s largest states, of which Vilnius served as a major religious and cultural centre.
Vilnius University, founded in 1579, is among the oldest universities in Eastern Europe, and its historic campus, woven directly into the old town’s streets and courtyards, remains an active, functioning university rather than simply a preserved historic site, students still attend lectures in buildings centuries old.
A City With an Officially Declared Republic Inside It
Uzupis, a small bohemian neighbourhood across the Vilnia River from the old town, humorously declared itself an independent republic in 1997, complete with its own tongue-in-cheek constitution, flag, and April Fools’ Day border checkpoint, a piece of artistic self-mythology that has since become a genuine cultural landmark rather than a passing joke. The area’s history is far more serious beneath that playful surface, it was once part of Vilnius’s historic Jewish quarter, a community devastated during the Holocaust, and the neighbourhood’s artistic reinvention exists alongside quieter memorials to that loss.
Gediminas’ Tower, atop a hill overlooking the old town, is the last surviving remnant of Vilnius’s upper castle complex, and remains a powerful national symbol, the Lithuanian flag raised there was one of the first visible acts of the country’s independence movement in 1988, before formal independence from the Soviet Union was even achieved.
Painting Baroque Spires and River Light
Vilnius’s Baroque church spires rising above the old town give a watercolourist rich, layered architectural detail to work with. We’ve captured that skyline in our own Vilnius Watercolor Print, painted first by hand and printed to order on archival paper, a small piece of Lithuania for a wall at home.
Home to both one of Europe’s oldest universities and a neighbourhood’s self-declared, only half-joking republic, Vilnius remains a capital that takes its history seriously without ever taking itself entirely too seriously.