Things to do
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Kaunas Castle
What survives of the medieval fortress at the river confluence is a round tower, a stretch of wall and a dry moat, restored with a modern glazed wing that divides opinion locally. A small exhibition inside covers the sieges by the Teutonic Order. The grounds are open and free, and the site takes perhaps half an hour unless an event fills the courtyard.
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Kaunas Old Town
Set on the spit where the Neris meets the Nemunas, the old town keeps a compact triangle of gothic and renaissance buildings around Town Hall Square, whose white tower is nicknamed the White Swan and used for weddings through the summer. Perkūnas House and the Vytautas church sit at the quiet end by the rivers. Half a day covers it before the walk continues into the interwar centre.
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Laisvės alėja
A pedestrian avenue more than a kilometre long runs from the old town to St. Michael the Archangel church, lined with lime trees, cafes and surviving modernist blocks from the interwar capital years. Smoking was banned along it for decades, a rule locals still mention. Evenings bring the heaviest crowds, and the side streets hold the more interesting restaurants.
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M. K. Čiurlionis National Museum of Art
Devoted to the painter and composer who shaped Lithuanian modernism, the collection hangs his symbolist cycles in dimmed rooms with his music playing, which is the point of coming. Folk art and Lithuanian painting fill the remaining galleries. It stands beside the Vytautas the Great War Museum in the same park, and the two combine into an afternoon.
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Ninth Fort
One of a ring of tsarist forts built around the city, later the holding point from which the Nazi occupation and local collaborators murdered tens of thousands of Jews, many brought from western Europe. The site combines the fort building, a museum and a stark concrete memorial visible from the motorway. It sits on the northern edge of Kaunas, about twenty minutes out by bus or taxi.
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Pažaislis Monastery
Italian baroque on the shore of the Kaunas reservoir, built for the Camaldolese order in the seventeenth century with a hexagonal church, frescoes and pink marble. Nuns live on part of the site, so access to the interior follows set hours and services. A music festival fills the courtyard in summer. Trolleybus and a lakeside path both reach it from the centre in around half an hour.