Up to the present days the millennium-old and turbulent history of Lithuania has preserved its extremely diverse heritage. Therefore, the country was the first among the Baltic States, which restored their statehood, to join the Convention concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage in 1992. For nearly ten years Lithuania has participated in the European Heritage Days(EHD) every year introducing new and new areas of its rich heritage.
Lithuania takes pride in its remarkable heritage of gothic, classicism and, especially, baroque brick architecture. These styles are excellently represented in churches, monasteries (that number over 900 together with churches), noblemen’s palaces and manors (over 600). Through creative combination of the Southern and Western Europe styles architects developed the well-known schools of Lithuanian baroque and classicism. Lithuania hosts the Way of Baroque and the Way of Monks cultural-musical programmes.
Lithuania has around 30 towns and settlements over 750 years old with survived old towns varying in size. Some old towns have preserved temples of different faiths, including Protestant churches, Jewish synagogues and Karaite as well as Tartar temples along with many Orthodox churches. Lithuania has 10 castles of different periods, purposes, and styles as well as several unique fortifications and some 1000 hill-forts.
One of the most vulnerable areas of the heritage is the wooden and small wooden architecture. More than ten authentic ethnographic villages of the 16th-17th centuries having survived in the Aukštaitija, Dzūkija and Žemaitija regions still foster ancient crafts, including wood carving and wickerwork, plain and black pottery, smithery, textiles, and weaving and knitting of sashes. Unique and especially beautiful palm-branches from dried flowers and grasses are weaved in the environs of Vilnius. One can enjoy home-craft articles, sometimes representing real folk art masterpieces, which are displayed and sold during craft fairs or live days of crafts that are gaining in popularity. The Kaziukas fair hosted in Vilnius for over 400 years is definitely the oldest in Lithuania.
Lithuania boasts deep-rooted traditions of wood carving. Wonderful examples of cross-making, such as crosses, folk wooden shrines with altars, roofed poles, figures of saints, cult and home furniture skilfully decorated with fretwork, have survived till the present. Contemporary wood carvers present a larger circle of works, including Baltic gods, mythological creatures and comic characters.
Lithuania is proud of its extremely rich and unique non-material cultural heritage including ancient songs, chants, raudos (a kind of laments) and sutartinės (ancient polyphonic folk songs), the latter featuring the unique examples of world’s folk music, as well as tales, stories, legends, dances and ritual ceremonies of Baltic festivals. Lithuania, with around 800 folk music companies, often hosts national and international folk festivals.
Even now, both occasional and ritual songs are sung during wedding parties and laments are still popular during funerals in Dzūkija. A large variety of ancient songs are sung and pagan rites to pay homage to water, fire and plants are performed during Midsummer Day Festival, also called Rasos or Kupolinė in Lithuania (St. John’s Day according to Christian tradition). Lithuania merrily celebrates the Shrove Tuesday, with frequent meals, especially pancakes, and the masqueraders clothed as mythical and comic characters noisily trying “to expel the winter”. Other traditional festivals include Easter, Christmas and New Year. The Sea Festival, hosted on the last weekend of July in Klaipėda since 1934, has become a traditional one.
Every region in Lithuania has preserved its original traditional dishes. The Aukštaitija residents are experts in flour and freshwater fish dishes and their culinary heritage is member of the European Culinary Heritage. The Žemaitija residents are excellent cooks of potatoe, vegetable and dairy meals. People from Suvalkija are unrivalled in smoked meat products. Residents of Dzūkija specialize in dishes of forest products as well as cakes. The most savoury smoked fish can be tested in Lithuania Minor and on both shores of the Curonian Lagoon. The food that is common throughout Lithuania is black rye-bread. Beer, an occasional drink in ancient times, has become very popular. There are around 80 big and small breweries in Lithuania. Some light brews have been recognized the best in the world for several years.
Specific is the heritage of the soviet times, which is most distinctly reflected in architectural style and buildings. An impressive collection of the soviet time sculptures is displayed at Grūtas Park; the soviet power is illustrated by the former Soviet missiles underground base in Plokštinė (Žemaitija National Park). The Museum of Genocide Victims in Vilnius (The KGB museum) introduces the most terrible period of the Soviet era. The Vilna Gaon Jewish State Museum in Vilnius reflects the multi-century Jewish history in Lithuania, as well as genocide of the Jews during World War II.
Lithuanians have always shown respect to trees and nature. The most scenic places of the national ethnic regions, with the largest concentration of historic sites, represent the National Parks of Aukštaitija, Žemaitija and Dzūkija. The unique beauty of nature is protected by the Curonian Spit National Park. The Insular Castle, the biggest in the Central and Eastern Europe, together with a historical Trakai town nicely blend into the labyrinth of lakes and relief of the banksin the Trakai National Historical Park. The territory of the first Lithuanian capital, the complex of Kernavė hill-forts, was conferred the status of State Cultural Reserve. Lithuania is also home to 30 regional parks, 48 state landscape reserves, 101 municipal landscape reserves, and more than 400 nature heritage objects of state importance. The most beautiful and unique protected areas of the Lithuanian nature cover more than 12 percent of the total country’s territory.
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