Klaipėda

The Balts first used the mouth of the Danė as a trading place for storing goods and holding annual fairs. In 1252 the Teutonic Knights and crusaders from Lübeck built a fort here called Memelburg, and settlers from Holstein, Lübeck and Dortmund followed; the town received Lübeck city rights in the 1250s. Sambians, Samogitians and Lithuanian armies attacked it, and in the 13th–15th centuries the town was burned or ruined around twenty times before the Treaty of Melno in 1422 fixed a border that left Memel with the Order for the next five centuries. In 1525 it adopted Lutheranism as part of the Duchy of Prussia.

The ice-free harbour made Memel prosperous. In the 18th century English merchants set up sawmills, and timber shipped to Britain for the Royal Navy was its main trade. In 1807–08, with Napoleon occupying most of Prussia, the king and his court lived here, and in Memel Frederick William III signed the October Edict that abolished serfdom. A great fire in 1854 destroyed much of the town, which was rebuilt on its grid. In the later 19th century Memel printed Lithuanian books in the Latin alphabet, banned in the Russian Empire, which were smuggled over the border.

After the First World War the region was detached from Germany under French administration until Lithuania seized it in the Klaipėda Revolt of January 1923. Nazi Germany forced its return in March 1939, Hitler's last territorial gain before the war. The Red Army took a nearly empty city on 28 January 1945. Resettled from across the Soviet Union, Klaipėda became the largest fishing and marine base in the European USSR and grew to about 203,000 people by 1989. Since independence it has gained a university, founded in 1991, and an LNG terminal opened in 2014.

Klaipėda's German past survives in its architecture — fachwerk warehouses, a straight-ruled street grid and 19th-century public buildings — and in the statue of Ännchen von Tharau on Theatre Square, the heroine of a wedding poem by Simon Dach, who was born in the city. The Lutheran church, once the faith of the Prussian Lithuanians, has one of its largest parishes here, and since 2023 the region has held annual Days of Lutheran Culture. Under Soviet rule religion was pushed aside: the builders of the Church of Mary, Queen of Peace were imprisoned and the building was turned into a philharmonic hall until it was returned to believers in 1987.

Cultural life began to develop again in the 1970s and 1980s, with the Sea Festival drawing thousands of people from across the country. Today the city has a drama theatre on Theatre Square, a musical theatre in the former Palace of Culture, a puppet theatre and several independent companies, and the conservatory founded in 1923 by the composer Stasys Šimkus still trains musicians. The year runs from the Light Festival and Music Spring to the Castle Jazz Festival and the Sea Festival, which fills the streets in high summer.

Postwar resettlement left a mixed population. Lithuanians made up about 80 per cent of residents in 2022, and among the country's large cities Klaipėda has the highest share of people whose native language is Russian. It has a German-Lithuanian school and an English-language Christian university, LCC International, whose students come from dozens of countries.

About 161,000 people lived in the city in 2025, and about 212,000 in the Klaipėda city and Klaipėda district municipalities together in 2020; most residents of the surrounding suburbs work in the city. People live mainly in the housing estates built after 1945 — Pempininkai, Naujakiemis, Alksnynė, Gedminai and others — where Pilsotas, a 34-storey tower, is the tallest building.

The port drives the economy. It handled about 36 million tonnes of cargo and 5,605 ships in 2022, and shipyards, stevedoring firms, the Švyturys brewery, a cardboard mill and factories in the free economic zone on the eastern edge of the city sit alongside a growing service sector. The city produces around 12 per cent of Lithuania's GDP, and incomes are above the national average. Klaipėda University has over 3,000 students, and LCC International University adds more.

The rhythm follows the seasons. In summer residents take the ferry to the beaches of Smiltynė or the bus to Melnragė and Giruliai, and the old town's terraces fill; winters are dark and windy. Arvydas Vaitkus has been mayor since 2023, and plans to bring back the trams that ran until 1967 have been studied but not built.

Klaipėda eats like the coast it stands on. Lithuania Minor, the old Prussian borderland around the city, was known for freshwater fish smoked, salted, roasted and dried, and for the country's best-known fish soup. Smoked eel and bream are common starters near the Baltic, especially on the Curonian Spit, and herring comes marinated, baked, fried or in aspic. With beer, bars serve kepta duona — black bread fried in oil and rubbed with garlic — and piršteliai prie alaus, thin rolled puff pastries.

Samogitia, just inland, contributes kastinys, a sour cream spread registered as a traditional speciality, and the city's restaurants serve the national dishes found across Lithuania: cepelinai, potato dumplings stuffed with meat, mushrooms or cheese and often served with sour cream, and šaltibarščiai, the pink cold beetroot and kefir soup of summer. Lunchtime set menus are a cheap way to try them.

Beer is the main drink. Švyturys, whose name means "lighthouse", has brewed in Klaipėda since 1784 and is the country's second-oldest brewery, with a gastropub and tours in the old town. The restaurant on the sailing ship Meridianas specialises in seafood, and Friedrich's Passage, an alley off Tiltų Street, is lined with places to eat.