Palace of the Grand Dukes of Lithuania

Vilnius, Lithuania

The Palace of the Grand Dukes of Lithuania was built originally in the 15th century for the rulers of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The Royal Palace in the Lower Castle evolved over the years and prospered during the 16th and mid-17th centuries. For four centuries the palace was the political, administrative and cultural center of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.

Soon after the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was incorporated into Tsarist Russia, Tsarist officials ordered the demolition of the remaining sections of the Royal Palace. The Palace was almost completely demolished in 1801, the bricks and stones were sold, and the site was bowered. Only a small portion of the walls up to the second floor survived, that were sold to a Jewish merchant Abraham Schlossberg around 1800 who incorporated them into his residential house. After the 1831 uprising, the czarist government expelled Schlossberg and took over the building as it was building a fortress beside it. Before the Second World War it was the office of the Lithuanian Army, during the World War II it was the office of the German Army, and after World War II it was used by Soviet security structures and later transformed into the Palace of Pioneers. Fragments of Schlossberg's house have become part of the Eastern Wing of the restored Royal Palace.

A new palace has been under construction since 2002 on the site of the original building. The Royal Palace was officially opened during the celebration of the millennium of the name of Lithuania in 2009.

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Details

Founded: 19th century
Category: Palaces, manors and town halls in Lithuania

Rating

4.7/5 (based on Google user reviews)

User Reviews

Özge Ergün (3 months ago)
If you want to learn about Lithuanian history, it is a nice place to visit. Quite detailed and I think it is worth visiting. You can learn all about the grand dukes of Lithuania, their lives and all the restoration process of the castle. If you try to follow all the details you may even spend a day here. The museum has 4 parts. The first part is the longest with all the history, in the second part you can see some rooms of the palace with objects and portraits, third part is dedicated to some information about music and daily life and in the forth part you can see a special collection of paintings and pictures. It is 11.50 euros, but if you are a student you pay half of the price. If you pay 3 euros extra, you can also get a VR experience. There is also an observation desk where you can see the view of the city out of the window.
Anton Rachitskiy (4 months ago)
pretty much nothing to see or to do, other then reading the extras from the book. yes, this is typical for such places since all valuable things were stolen, but it's still hard to see any idea or purpose of the exhibition ... a few rooms are restored and that's it. Maybe a few interesting things were the connections of the duke families across Europe and medieval piping.
kat (4 months ago)
Be sure to come here during your visit in Vilnius! This museum provides a quite throughout, in-depth exhibition of Lithuania’s history in general. Tickets can be bought at the museum and you can choose to buy a full ticket, which includes the four routes available, or buy tickets for each route singularly. I would definitely recommend visiting routes I and II, and only going to III and IV if you have time. Routes I and II are the bigger chunk of the exhibition and it took us around 2 hours to finish it. III and IV went over cultural history (music, art, etc.) and was a shorter exhibition.
NANA DESIGN (4 months ago)
My favorite museum in Vilnius! Turns out, they have rich history about this place and full of culture activities, especially during summer. I was very lucky to not only have the chance to revisit this massive palace and get to know more about its stories, but also got to enjoy Lithuanian 100th anniversary of folk song and dance festival (which only happens every 4 years).
Aivis S. (5 months ago)
Very interesting museum. Helps to understand Lithuanian history and how it developed during centuries. In the basement, you will find corservated ruins and during arheology found things. On the 1st and 2nd floor exhibiotions of Lithuania history. On 2nd and 3rd floor reconstructed Grand dukes living and official rooms.
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