Vilnius, Kaunas & Eastern Lithuania

Eastern Lithuania is the historic heart of the state. Hillforts at Kernavė on the Neris were the centre of early Lithuanian power, and in the 14th century Grand Duke Gediminas moved his capital to Vilnius, first mentioned in his letters of 1323. Trakai, 28 kilometres west, was the family seat of Kęstutis and his son Vytautas, who brought Karaim and Tatar settlers from the Crimea around 1400 and completed the island castle. Kaunas grew from a castle on the Nemunas into a Hanseatic trading town.

Under the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth Vilnius became a Baroque city of churches and the seat of a university founded in 1579. It also became the "Jerusalem of the North", a centre of Jewish learning associated with the Vilna Gaon, and Litvak communities filled the towns of the region. After the partitions the whole region fell to the Russian Empire, and Kaunas was ringed with forts in the late 19th century.

Between the wars the region was split: Poland seized Vilnius in 1920, so Kaunas served as the temporary capital, gaining ministries, a university and modernist buildings. In 1940 the Japanese consul Chiune Sugihara issued visas in Kaunas that saved thousands of Jewish refugees. The Holocaust then destroyed the Jewish communities, with mass murders at Paneriai near Vilnius and the Ninth Fort in Kaunas. Vilnius returned to Lithuania in 1939, and in 1991 it was the scene of the deadly Soviet assault on the TV tower.

The east takes in two of Lithuania's ethnographic regions: Aukštaitija, the "highlands" of the north-east, and Dzūkija in the south, each with its own dialect, songs and crafts. Aukštaitija is the home of sutartinės polyphonic songs, and Dzūkija is known for its folk songs, wooden crosses and mushroom and berry gathering in the pine forests.

Vilnius is Lithuania's most diverse city, with large Polish and Russian communities; around the capital, in districts such as Šalčininkai, Poles are the majority and Polish is heard as much as Lithuanian. Trakai keeps the small Karaim community, with its kenesa prayer house and three-windowed wooden houses. Catholic devotion centres on the Gates of Dawn chapel in Vilnius, and Kaziuko mugė in early March fills the capital's streets with crafts, palm-like verbos made of dried flowers and gingerbread.

Kaunas sees itself as the more Lithuanian, more down-to-earth rival of cosmopolitan Vilnius, with the basketball club Žalgiris as its religion and a cultural confidence boosted by its year as European Capital of Culture in 2022. Užupis, the self-declared republic in Vilnius, sums up the capital's playful side.

Vilnius has about 600,000 people and Kaunas about 300,000, together holding nearly a third of the country's population. Panevėžys (about 85,000) is the main town of the north and Alytus (about 50,000) of the south, while Utena, Ignalina, Molėtai, Zarasai and Anykščiai are the smaller towns of the lake country.

Vilnius is the engine of the economy: government, finance and fintech, software, lasers and life sciences, shared-service centres and a large student population. Kaunas has manufacturing, logistics and a growing tech scene around its technology university. The north-east lost its biggest employer when the Ignalina nuclear plant near Visaginas closed in 2009, and rural districts continue to age and shrink, while tourism supports the spa towns.

Life in the cities is fast by Lithuanian standards, with busy café culture and growing suburbs; in the countryside, summers revolve around lakes, gardens and the sauna. Current issues include housing costs in Vilnius, the security of the Belarusian border and the integration of new arrivals from Ukraine and Belarus.

The east is where many Lithuanian classics are most at home. In Trakai the Karaim kibinai, half-moon pastries filled with mutton or other meat, are sold from cafés along the lake. Dzūkija is buckwheat and mushroom country: buckwheat pancakes and buckwheat cake (grikinė boba) are regional dishes, and dried and pickled mushrooms go into sauces and soups. Šakotis, the spit-baked "tree cake", is baked here as across Lithuania, and Druskininkai set a record for the largest one in 2015.

Aukštaitija is known for potato dishes and vėdarai, and for meat smoked over alder and juniper. The north around Biržai and Pasvalys is the heartland of Lithuanian farmhouse beer, unfiltered and still made to traditional recipes by small breweries.

Stakliškės, south of Kaunas, is the home of traditional midus (mead), and Vilnius and Kaunas have the country's best range of restaurants, from cepelinai halls to modern New Baltic cooking. Trejos devynerios, a bitter herbal spirit, is taken as a digestif, and Druskininkai's mineral water is drunk at the springs.

Vilnius Old Town, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, holds the Cathedral and its belfry, the Palace of the Grand Dukes, St Anne's Church, the university courtyards, the Gates of Dawn and the Church of St Peter and St Paul with its white stucco interior. Gediminas' Tower and the Three Crosses overlook the city, and the Museum of Occupations and Freedom Fights occupies the former KGB building. Kernavė's hillforts lie to the north-west, and Trakai's island castle, the Karaim kenesa and the lakes of Trakai Historical National Park lie to the west.

Kaunas has its old town at the meeting of the Nemunas and Neris, with the castle and Town Hall, the interwar modernist buildings along Laisvės alėja, the M. K. Čiurlionis National Museum of Art, the Ninth Fort and the Baroque Pažaislis Monastery by the Kaunas Reservoir. The Lithuanian Open Air Museum at Rumšiškės and the spa town of Birštonas are nearby.

In the north-east, Aukštaitija National Park has the Ladakalnis viewpoint over lakes, the Ginučiai watermill and the wooden church at Palūšė. Anykščiai offers the treetop walkway, the Puntukas boulder and the narrow-gauge railway, and Biržai has karst sinkholes. In the south, Druskininkai's spas, the Čiurlionis memorial museum and Grūtas Park lead into Dzūkija National Park, with its wooden villages at Zervynos and the confluence at Merkinė.