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Post-conference tour

Conference "Toward Liberty: Turning Principles into Reality"

July 6-10th 2003, Vilnius, Lithuania

July 11 (Vilnius – Kaunas)

Vilnius, capital of Lithuania, is located on the Neris River. The city is the cultural center and largest city of Lithuania.

Vilnius’ diversity of architectural styles, churches, towers, fortifications, secluded medieval courtyards and narrow streets tell us much about its rich history. It is no wonder that the old city is on the World Heritage list. The greatest European architectural styles – Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque and Classicism – meet here and complement each other.

Our day in Vilnius will begin with a breakfast at the hotel, after which we’ll leave for a guided bus tour around the Vilnius city center, which ends at Town Hall Square. A sightseeing tour of Old Town will start here and will feature Vilnius Cathedral with it’s historical exhibition “Christianity in Lithuanian Art”; Vilnius University’s, one of Europe's oldest, Gediminas Castle, with it’s breathtaking view of Vilnius and Pilies street, with beautifully restored 16th-18th century buildings now housing cozy cafes, bars, private art galleries and souvenir shops. The tour will continue onto the Gothic corner of Vilnius, with St. Anne's and Bernadine’s churches; the Gates of Dawn, with a miraculous icon of the Virgin Mary; the Presidential Palace and the Medieval Jewish quarter.

After lunch, our day in Vilnius will conclude with a visit to St. Peter and Paul's church, whose 2,000 biblical, mythological and historical statues are the pearl of Vilnius’ Baroque architecture.

The day will end in Kaunas with a concert at dinner at Pazaislis monastery, one of the most impressive Baroque ensembles in Northern Europe.

July 12th (Kaunas - Nida)

Kaunas, Lithuania's second largest city, located 100 km from Vilnius, was the capital of Lithuania between the two World Wars when Vilnius was occupied by Poland.

Our Kaunas city tour will show the main attractions of its Old Town: Kaunas Castle, at the confluence of the two largest Lithuanian rivers - the Nemunas and the Neris where the town was founded, Town Hall Square, with the 15th-16th century merchants' houses and the 17th century’s white, baroque Town Hall dominating its center, the nearby majestic Kaunas Cathedral and the Gothic Vytautas Church built in 1400 on the Nemunas riverbank. A further drive will take us to the central part of Kaunas, with the linden-tree lined Freedom Avenue, the most popular street of the city and Unity Square with the Eternal Flame and monuments to Lithuania’s independence. The adjacent Ciurlionis Art Museum houses paintings by the outstanding Lithuanian composer and artist Mikalojus Konstantinas Ciurlionis and the unique Devils' Museum, with a large collection of devils' art, will also be visited.

After lunch, a voyage by speedboat to the Curonian Spit will begin. The Curonian Spit, located between the Curonian Lagoon and the Baltic Sea, has the biggest sand dunes in Europe. At the end of the day, we will visit the famous German writer’s Thomas Mann museum, and a local neo-gothic church and old ethnographic cemetery.

July 13th (Nida – Klaipeda - Palanga)

After breakfast and a walk on the majestic sea-shore sand dunes and a climb up the Great Dune to see a breathtaking view, we will leave for Klaipeda - the third biggest city in Lithuania, an important port, and Lithuania's gateway to the Baltic Sea. It has a long history - once a fishing village of ancient Balts changed by the arrival of German Crusaders, who seized this land and built their castle there in 1252, into the city of Memel.

Our Klaipeda city tour includes the Old Town, with interesting merchants' warehouses of typical German style with ''fachwerk'' decorations, the old Castle territory, Theatre Square with the Simon Dach Fountain, named after the 17th century German poet, born in Klaipeda, with a statue of a girl in the middle of the fountain, Annehen von Tharau, the subject of a famous German wedding and love song. Before the trip to Palanga, the major Lithuanian resort, we’ll visit the unusual Clock Museum, an exhibit of the whole history of telling time, The tour offers a visit to the Amber Museum, a walk in the Botanical Park of Palanga with Birute's Hill - a 22-meter dune, and the central street full of souvenir shops, open-air cafes, and leading to the beach and the pier.

July 14th (Siauliai district – Rumsiskes - Vilnius)

The Soviet military missile Depot in Plateliai will be the first place visited this morning. Then we’ll leave for the Siauliai district to see one of the most unforgettable and emotional sites in Lithuania - the Hill of Crosses, a shrine for many Catholics. The Tsarist authorities removed hundreds of crosses that were set at this location to honor the dead after the rebellion of 1831. When the Soviet authorities took over Lithuania after World War II, they tried to remove these crosses many times but overnight people secretly replaced them again. Today more than 50,000 crosses are testimony of Lithuanians’ spirit. Pope John Paul II visited the hill during his trip to Lithuania in 1993.

After that we will visit the Rumsiskes ethnographical museum. It is a vast and impressive ethnographic open-air museum displaying the 18th – 20th century’s Lithuanian peasant’s life. As in Lithuania itself, it is divided into four ethnographic regions, each with distinct traditions of its own in architecture and customs. Rumsiskes’ farmsteads, furniture, farm tools, colors and patterns of woven fabrics inside the houses create a perfect picture of the country's rural life of many centuries ago.

The tour will end in Vilnius.