Capitals of Lithuania

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Capital cities of Lithuania were:

  1. Kernavė (until around 1316)
  2. Trakai (around 1316–1323)
  3. Vilnius (around 1323-1920)
  4. Kaunas (1920-1940)
  5. Vilnius (since 1940).

History and present

Kernavė and Trakai were the earliest rulers of Lithuanian grand dukes.

Kernavė is held as the seat of the first and only Lithuanian King Mindaugas . Today it is a place of many castle mountains (piliakalnis) with imposing archaeological finds and an attractive tourist center.

Trakai is famous for its rebuilt moated castle . Since Vytautas times, Trakai has been a settlement for the Karaimen, Tatars, a Jewish sect.

According to legend, Vilnius was founded after Grand Duke Gediminas had dreamed of a wolf on the mountain and Lizdeika understood this as a sign of the Baltic gods for the establishment of a new Lithuanian capital. It was first mentioned in documents in 1323. Vilnius has long been the center of power in Lithuania. It has a great multiethnic past. Today Vilnius is considered the intellectual and cultural center of today's Lithuania.

Kaunas was the "temporary capital" in the interwar period, while Vilnius was administered in Poland (Lithuanian-Polish relations have not been free of tension so far). So Kaunas was experienced as the most Lithuanian city - conservative, patriotic and the Vytautas city. There are many representative buildings from the 1930s in the power center of the First Republic. Kaunas is considered the opposite pole to the medieval, Hanseatic city center and is culturally strongly influenced (the museum city with, for example, a collection of thousands of devils).

The intellectual and cultural center of today's Lithuania is without doubt the capital Vilnius again . It had long been the center of power in Lithuania. Today, Vilnius is considered the European city and economic center of Lithuania: in the Vilnius district the share of foreign investment is about 60%, the GDP is about 30% higher than the GDP average of the Lithuanian districts (GDP in the city of Vilnius is over LTL 4,000 or 1,200 euros per person).