The founding myth of Vilnius has many affinities with legends of Rome and other great cities. Though hardly historically accurate, it was necessary to legitimize the royal seat of a medieval grand duke.
History
311 статей
Lithuania's Prime Minister joined dozens of people marking the seventy-fifth anniversary of the massacre of more than 650 Jews by Nazi occupiers and their local Lithuanian collaborators at the town of Šeduva on Tuesday. It was the third such event in as many days, coming after Holocaust-related comm...
A memorial march is held in Molėtai, eastern Lithuania, on Monday to honour victims of the Holocaust.
Lithuania remained pagan until the late Middle Ages and, as such, was an object of curiosity as well as hostility for Christian Europe. Paganism, wrote thirteenth-century Franciscan scholar Bartholomew the Englishman, was "ritus mirabilis". Christian scholars who described pagan rituals did not shy ...
Ministers of five Eastern European countries have issued a joint statement, calling for investigation into the crimes of communist regimes in Europe.
Mimicking and copying Western Europe was one of the main strategies that Lithuanians used to cope with the socio-political and existential chaos after the collapse of communism, says Dr. Rasa Baločkaitė of Vytautas Magnus University. In her research, she applies the concepts of Postcolonialist studi...
On August 23, Lithuania is celebrating the 27th anniversary of the Baltic Way, a defining moment in the Baltic countries' movement for independence from the Soviet Union. To read this article, try a €5.99 monthly subscription by clicking here.
Exhumation of remains of German prisoners of war of World War II has been started in the southern redoubt of the Kaunas fortress, Kauno Diena daily reports.
In the historic part of Vilnius, on Didžioji Street, there stands the Orthodox Church of Saint Paraskeva, one of the finest examples of nineteenth-century Byzantine style architecture in the Lithuanian capital. To read this article, try a €5.99 monthly subscription by clicking here.
History is a powerful tool and sixteenth-century Lithuanian noble houses were only too happy to ground their contemporary power in a historical myth which traced their ancestry to Ancient Rome. To read this article, try a €5.99 monthly subscription by clicking here.
The old Jewish cemetery in Vilnius has been listed among cultural objects protected by the state, under a decree signed by Lithuania's Culture Minister Šarūnas Birutis on Friday.
In Lithuanian historical consciousness, Barbora Radvilaitė (or Barbara Radziwill, 1522-1551), the Grand Duchess of Lithuania and the Queen of Poland, occupies a special place. She is arguably the best-known woman in Lithuania's history and one whose life has become a source of myth and fiction. To r...
What is believed to be one of the oldest stone building in Kaunas will undergo major restoration. After the conservation-restoration works are complete, the building that faces the City Hall will regain some of its sixteenth-century façade. To read this article, try a €5.99 monthly subscription by c...
A new five-rouble coin issued by the central bank of Russia has irritated Lithuania by including its capital Vilnius among the European cities liberated from the Nazis by the Red Army.
An event in Vilnius on Tuesday will pay tribute to the genocide of Roma people during World War Two.
More than seven decades ago, long queues of people would line outside the house number 4 on Žemaitijos Street in Vilnius. Each day, two hundred hungry and exhausted creatures came to the library of the Vilna Ghetto - not for bread, but for books.
The Battle of Durbė, in which rebelling Samogitians beat the Livonian Order in 1260, is undeservedly overshadowed by other medieval military victories, but it was a crucial moment in the history of pagan Lithuanians' resistance to the encroachment of Christian knights. To read this article, try a €5...
The works of Vilnius-born Jewish painter David Labkovski that were recently presented in Los Angeles could serve as a good introduction to teaching about the Holocaust in US schools, researchers say.
The Great Synagogue of Vilna was once to Jewish culture and religion what the Vatican is to Christendom, say archaeologists from the United States and Israel who are researching the edifice which was razed to the ground over half a century ago. To read this article, try a €5.99 monthly subscription ...