Palanga

People lived near Šventoji some 5,000 years ago, and between the 10th and 13th centuries Palanga was a main settlement of the Curonians' Mēguva Land, a centre of trade and crafts on the old Amber Road. It first appears in writing in 1161, when King Valdemar I of Denmark landed and took the Curonian castle. The Treaty of Melno gave it to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in 1422. Legend says the priestess Birutė tended a sacred fire on the hill that bears her name before Grand Duke Kęstutis carried her off as his wife.

Palanga passed to the Russian Empire in 1795, and in 1824 Count Michał Tyszkiewicz bought the manor. His grandson built a pier in 1882 to ship bricks and passengers, and his great-grandson Feliks commissioned the neo-Renaissance palace, completed in 1897 to designs by Franz Schwechten, in a park laid out by Édouard André. The town became a resort, and after the 1864 ban on Lithuanian printing it was an important route for smuggled books.

Palanga belonged briefly to Latvia after the First World War and passed to Lithuania in 1921 in an exchange of territory that gave the country a coastline. Before the Second World War nearly half its people were Jewish, and the amber craft for which the town is known was largely a Jewish trade. After German forces arrived in June 1941, the Jewish men were shot outside the town and the women and children murdered a month later. In the Soviet period the park became a botanical garden in 1960 and the palace the Amber Museum.

Palanga is where Lithuanians go to the seaside, and its culture is that of a summer resort. Basanavičiaus street becomes a pedestrian carnival of restaurants, bars and rides in high season; evening walks end on the pier for the sunset; and concerts are held on summer evenings, including at the palace, which has been a gathering place for music since the Tyszkiewicz era. The town marks the opening of the season as its biggest celebration, and festivals of folklore, children's song, classical music and dance run through the year.

The Tyszkiewicz legacy is everywhere — the pier, the palace, the park and its old oak planted by President Antanas Smetona. So is amber: the museum holds about 28,000 pieces, and amber jewellery is sold all along the main street. The town takes pride in its place in Lithuanian history, from Birutė's legend and the chapel on her hill to the smuggling of banned books and the first public performance of a play in Lithuanian, the comedy America in the Bathhouse.

Palanga lies in Samogitia, and its name is probably Curonian, linked to marshy lowlands. The Jewish community that once made up half the town is remembered by a memorial stone in the botanical park.

About 18,500 people lived in Palanga at the start of 2025. The city municipality takes in Šventoji, Nemirseta, Būtingė, the airport and other former fishing villages, stretching 24 km along the coast from Nemirseta to the Latvian border. In summer the population is many times that.

Tourism is the economy. Palanga is officially a climatic, balneological and mud therapy resort, valued for its sea air, its sunny summers and its mineral waters. Restaurants, bars, rides and shops depend on a short, intense season, and almost all the visitors are Lithuanian. One of the oldest working pharmacies in the country, founded in the mid-19th century, still serves the town.

The year has two speeds. From June to August the streets are full late into the night and the beaches are crowded; in winter Palanga is quiet and windy. The town has gymnasium and art schools, and Kretinga, 12 km inland, has the nearest railway station.

Palanga's food is the food of a Samogitian seaside town. Samogitia is known for its many porridges, crayfish, kastinys — a sour cream spread registered as a traditional speciality — and cibulinė, a herring and onion soup. Along the Baltic, smoked eel and bream are common starters, and herring is eaten marinated, baked, fried or in aspic. Crayfish are a summer delicacy served with beer.

The resort's restaurants also 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 soup of beetroot and kefir eaten in summer with hot boiled potatoes. Sour cream comes with almost everything, from soups to pancakes.

Basanavičiaus street is lined with cheap and cheerful places to eat, and beer is the main drink. Bar snacks include kepta duona, black bread fried in oil and rubbed with garlic, and piršteliai prie alaus, thin rolled puff pastries served with beer. Amber shops and food stalls share the street, which stays busy until late in summer.