Trakai

The name Trakai, from the Lithuanian word for a glade, was first recorded by the Teutonic Knights in 1337. The town began at Senieji Trakai, Old Trakai, where Grand Duke Gediminas built a brick castle before moving his capital to Vilnius. His son Kęstutis inherited it and moved the town to its present site between the lakes, building the peninsula castle and beginning the island castle. Kęstutis's son Vytautas the Great, born at Old Trakai in 1350, finished the island castle around 1409, granted the town Magdeburg rights that year — among the first in Lithuania — and spent more time here than in Vilnius. He died in the island castle in 1430.

Vytautas resettled Karaim from the Crimea in 1397 and 1398 after a campaign against the Golden Horde, and Tatars came too. Christian and Karaim communities each had their own self-government. After the Union of Lublin in 1569 the town slowly declined as political life moved elsewhere. The Karaim suffered heavily in 1648, were reduced to three families by war, famine and plague early in the 18th century, and then recovered to about 300 by 1765. The peninsula castle was destroyed in the Russo-Polish War of 1654–1667 and never rebuilt.

In the 20th century Trakai passed between Polish, Soviet and German rule; in 1944 the Polish Home Army and Soviet partisans drove the Germans out, and after the war many Poles left. The island castle was rebuilt in the 1950s and 1960s on Lithuanian initiative, despite resistance from the Soviet authorities, and its history museum was established in 1962.

Trakai's identity is bound up with the Karaim, a small Turkic-speaking people of Judaic faith whose kenesa, completed around 1800, stands on Karaimų Street. Their language, Karaim, is now spoken by only a few dozen people, and the Trakai dialect is critically endangered, though official support and the interest of visitors give it a chance of survival. Many Karaim do not regard themselves as Jews, and their story — from the Crimea to the island castle, where they are presented as its ancient defenders — is a large part of the town's appeal.

The town has always been mixed. Lithuanians, Poles and Russians live alongside the Karaim, Lipka Tatars, Litvak Jews and Russian Old Believers. In the 2021 census about two-thirds of residents were Lithuanian and nearly a fifth Polish.

The castle stands for the golden age of Vytautas, who made the town the capital in 1409, and in summer it becomes a stage for festivals and concerts. Lake Galvė and the other lakes around the town carry their own legends, most of them tragic love stories.

About 5,400 people lived in Trakai at the 2021 census: roughly 68 per cent Lithuanians, 19 per cent Poles and 7 per cent Russians, with small Belarusian, Karaim and Tatar communities. It is the administrative centre of Trakai District Municipality, and its closeness to Vilnius — only 7 kilometres from the capital's city limits — makes it a popular tourist destination and shapes its economy.

On summer weekends the town fills with day visitors walking from the bus station to the castle, hiring boats on Lake Galvė and stopping at the kibinai cafés. On weekdays and in winter it returns to the pace of a small lake town. A new bus station opened in 2022, with a supermarket in its complex, and trains from Vilnius terminate at a simple platform on the south edge of town.

The town lies within Trakai Historical National Park, founded in 1991 to protect it together with the surrounding forests, lakes and villages, and the lakes around it — Galvė, Luka, Totoriškės, Akmena and Gilušis — set the shape of its streets.

Kibinai are the town's signature: pastries filled with mutton and onion, brought by the Karaim from the Crimea and now so tied to Trakai that tourist guides mention them as the local speciality. English-language travel guides compare them to Cornish pasties. They are sold in cafés along Karaimų Street and elsewhere in the town, and the tradition is one of the clearest ways the Karaim heritage reaches visitors.

The rest of the menu is Lithuanian. Cepelinai, large dumplings of grated potato stuffed with meat, curd cheese or mushrooms and served with a sour cream sauce and bacon bits, are the national dish, and in summer šaltibarščiai, the pink cold soup of beetroot and kefir, is everywhere. Kugelis, a baked potato pudding, and šakotis, the spit-baked "tree cake", appear too.

Lithuanian cooking draws on what the land provides — barley, potatoes, rye, beets, mushrooms and berries, with dairy products as a speciality — and the forests and lakes around Trakai are part of that larder.