The best family-friendly hikes and walks in Paltiškių Miškas

Another highlight is the Kaunas Cathedral of St. Peter and St. Paul. It is the largest building in the Old Town and has been the basilica of the Cardinal of Lithuania since 1921. The church was built in the Gothic architectural style and features a Baroque high altar depicting the crucifixion scene of Jesus. Worth seeing is the sacristy with its cross vault or the 17th-century Neo-Gothic wood-carved chapel.

Also remarkable are the memorial plaques at the edge of the graveyard from the German cities of Munich, Frankfurt (Main) and Berlin, which in November 1941 brought about 1000 of their fellow citizens, including women, here to be murdered by the Nazi murderer gangs.

(UN) FILLED VOID Or lune 14, 1941, at night, a mass forceful deportation of Lithuanian citizens to the most severe USSR areas started. Deportations aimed at changing social and national composition of citizens and suppress resistance to the occupation regime. In the echelon formation places, at train stations, families were divided into two groups: 'Group A' consisted of "heads of family', and 'Group B' - of 'family members", mothers, children, and grandparents. People from 'Group A' were carried by convoy to forced labour camps and prisoner-of-war camps, and people from 'Group B' - to places of exile. In total, more than 17,000 people were deported from Lithuania during the four-day deportations. The exhibition "(Un)filled Void" conveys the drama of separation experienced by families after the repressions that occurred in June 1941. The members of the most socially vulnerable group of society (women, children, grandparents) that are captured in photographs from exile, metaphoricall discover a connection with the breadwinner (husband, father, son) in daily life alongside the accompanying silhouettes of memory. The poems framed in the silhouette of a young man are symbolically presented as an expression of the emotional response. Their author, Lithuanian officer Alfonsas Kazlauskas, was arrested and separated from his wife, two daughters and mother on June 14, 1941. The most sensitive experiences of a man with a robust spirit in loneliness are strongly felt in the verses: longing for family and love, preserving hope and determination, discovering the meaning of existence, feeling the support of the loved ones, giving the new meanings to the sense of nature. The apple orchard becomes an idyllic, cosy and a safe allusion to the homeland that was not available at the time. The branches make an impression of a patronizing veil wrapping the images of people marked by a brutal regime and thoughts frozen in ink. They came back, they won, they stayed alive in our memory .. Alfonsas Kazlauskas (1904-1984) Head of the family, Lithuanian officer, political prisoner. In 1926, he graduated from the Military School and was awarded the rank of lieutenant in artillery. In 1932, he graduated from the course of Vytautas Magnus Officers' Artillery Department. He became a captain in 1934. In early 1940's he was promoted and became a major. Upon the liquidation of the Lithuanian Armed Forces on October 3, 1940, he was appointed Chief of Staff of the Separate Zenith Artillery Division of the 29th Rifle Territorial Corps of the Red Army. On June 14, 1941, he was arrested and deported to the Norisk forced labour camp (Krasnoyarsk Krai). On 5th of September, 1942, he was sentenced by the USSR NKVD Special Meeting to eight years. He was released from the forced labour camp in 1947 and returned to Lithuania to his family. The exhibition uses material from the collections of Kaunas Ninth Fort Museum.

Kaunas has a beautiful old town. In the evenings, you can relax in one of the many bars.

www.9fortomuziejus.lt

The castle was originally built in 1367.

Impressive equestrian statue right next to Kaunas Castle.

Not Henry Wilson but Jonas Vileišis (January 3, 1872 – June 1, 1942) who was a Lithuanian politician. From September 30, 1921 until July 2, 1931, he served as mayor of Kaunas, the temporary capital of Lithuania. Under his direction Kaunas grew rapidly and became a truly modern city. A water and wastewater system, costing over 15 million Lithuanian litas, was put in place; the city expanded from 18 square km to 40; more than 2,500 buildings were built, including three modern bridges over the Neris and Nemunas rivers. All the city streets were paved, horse-drawn transportation was replaced with modern bus lines, new suburbs were planned and built, and new parks and squares were established. The foundations for a social security system were laid, three new schools were built, and new public libraries, including the Vincas Kudirka library, were established. He maintained many contacts in other European cities and as a result Kaunas was an active participant in European urban life.