Šiauliai

Šiauliai takes its founding date from 22 September 1236, when the Livonian Order's chronicles recorded the Battle of Saule, in which Samogitian and Semigallian forces destroyed the Livonian Brothers of the Sword. It grew as a defence post against the crusading orders, then, after their defeat at Grunwald in 1410, as a farming town; a wooden church was built in 1445 and the brick church that is now the cathedral in 1617–26. Magdeburg rights followed in the 16th century, but war and plague devastated the town again and again.

Its rebirth came after a peasant revolt in 1769, when Antoni Tyzenhaus rebuilt it on a rectangular Classicist grid with brick public buildings. King Stanisław August Poniatowski confirmed its rights in 1791 and gave it a coat of arms with the bear of Samogitia. Under the Russian Empire, the Riga–Tilsit road and the railway of 1871 made it an industrial city. Chaim Frenkel's leather works became the largest in the empire, and by 1897 Šiauliai was the third city of Lithuania; by 1909 more than half its people were Jewish.

About 85 per cent of the buildings burned in the First World War. Rebuilt by 1929, the city made most of Lithuania's leather and much of its footwear, flax fibre and sweets. German troops arrived in June 1941; that summer about 8,000 Jews from the city and region were murdered in the Kužiai forest, and the rest were confined to two ghettos. About 80 per cent of the city was destroyed in the war and rebuilt in Soviet style, with electronics and engineering plants. Since independence the airfield has become a NATO air base, and in 2020 work began on a large aircraft maintenance centre there.

The Hill of Crosses is the cultural landmark most associated with the city. Crosses are thought to have first been placed on the former hill fort after the uprising of 1831 for rebels whose bodies were never found; under Soviet rule the hill became a symbol of quiet resistance, and the authorities bulldozed it three times. Lithuanian cross-crafting is recognised by UNESCO as intangible cultural heritage, and since 1990 the number of crosses has grown enormously.

In the city itself, the Battle of Saule — the name means "sun" — is a point of pride, commemorated by the golden archer on Sundial Square. Šiauliai has a taste for small, quirky museums — of bicycles, photography, cats, angels, radio and television — and its main boulevard is dotted with sculptures and murals. The State Drama Theatre and the Saulė concert hall stand on Tilžės street, and the Flower of the Sun folk festival brings international music and dance in July.

Sport matters here. Rugby, basketball, football, athletics and cycling are the most popular, and the local rugby clubs Vairas and Baltrex are multiple national champions and the main academies of Lithuanian rugby. BC Šiauliai plays at the arena built for the 2011 European basketball championship. The 2024 film The Southern Chronicles, set in the city's Pietinis housing district, became one of the highest-grossing Lithuanian productions.

About 113,000 people lived in Šiauliai in 2024. At the 2021 census about 94 per cent were Lithuanian and 3 per cent Russian. The city spreads over about 81 square km, much of it green space and water, and much of it was rebuilt in Soviet style after the war, including large housing districts such as Pietinis.

The economy grew from leather and later electronics, metalworking and wood processing; since independence the service sector has grown, and shops are strung along Tilžės street, the city's longest at almost 10 km. The NATO air-policing base and the aircraft maintenance centre at the airport add jobs, and Vilnius University's Šiauliai Academy, as the former Šiauliai University has been called since 2021, brings students. In 2025 the city joined UNESCO's Global Network of Learning Cities.

Daily routines centre on the pedestrian stretch of Vilniaus street and the malls, with 37 urban bus routes linking the districts. In summer residents head for the beaches of Lake Rėkyva and celebrate midsummer there. Artūras Visockas has been mayor since 2015.

Šiauliai sits where Samogitia meets Aukštaitija, and its table draws on both. Aukštaitija is known for potato dishes and vėdarai, potato sausages, and northern Aukštaitija is the country's beer region; Samogitia is known for its many porridges, kastinys — a sour cream spread registered as a traditional speciality — and cibulinė, a herring and onion soup. Restaurants also serve the national dishes found everywhere in Lithuania: cepelinai, potato dumplings stuffed with meat, mushrooms or cheese and often served with sour cream, and in summer šaltibarščiai, the pink cold soup of beetroot and kefir.

Beer is the city's pride. Gubernija, founded in 1665 to serve a noble estate and counted as Lithuania's oldest business, still brews on the northern side of the city and sells its beer for tasting. With beer, bars serve kepta duona, black bread fried in oil and rubbed with garlic, and piršteliai prie alaus, thin rolled puff pastries.

Šiauliai once made about a third of Lithuania's sweets, and a chocolate museum in the centre recalls the trade. A budget canteen near the centre serves traditional Lithuanian lunches, a tavern on Aušros avenue adds live music to the same cooking, and the pubs and cafés of Vilniaus street fill in the evenings.