A short and interesting guide to Lithuania, introducing the main ideas that have shaped Lithuania’s identity. We invite you to discover the face of Lithuania.
Plan your visit
Tuesday to Sunday from 10.00 to 18.00.
We advise you to buy the entry tickets online. Please choose the date and time for the visit: click here.
Ticket prices
- Adult – 6,00 €
- Concessions* – 3,00 €
Family ticket
- 1 adult and up to 4 children – 9,00 €
- Up to 2 adults and 4 children – 15,00 €
Combo tickets
- Historical Triangle (Castellan’s House, the Old Arsenal and Gediminas Castle Tower) – 12,00 €
- Museums in Vilnius (every branch of National Museum of Lithuania that is located in Vilnius) – 30,00 €
Guided tours and educational classes
- Guided tour (1 hour) for a group up to 15 people – 15,00 € + museum entry tickets
- Educational classes for schoolchildren – 3,00 €
- Educational workshops for adults – 3,00 € + museum entry ticket
Exposition is free of charge for the following visitors:
pre-school children; orphans and children who have lost guardianship by their parents; people with a disability and their one accompanying person; persons from 80 years of age; employees of Lithuania’s museums; members of the International Council of Museums (ICOM); residents of children care homes and socially supported children; teachers accompanying groups of schoolchildren; Vilnius Pass card holders (valid for visiting The New Arsenal, The Old Arsenal, The House of Signatories, Gediminas Castle Tower, The Bastion of the Vilnius Defence Wall, Kazys Varnelis House-Museum, House of Histories); students of Lithuanian art schools for children and youth; students of Vilnius College of Technologies and Design; students of Balys Dvarionas decennary music school; members of the Lithuanian Association of Art Historians; members of the International Association of Art Critics; members of the Lithuanian Association of Archaeologists; guides with valid guide ID; guides accompanying groups of tourists; employees of the Cultural Heritage Department at the Ministry of Culture and its territorial branches; cadets and conscripts from General Jonas Žemaitis Military Academy of Lithuania; soldiers of the Lithuanian Grand Duke Gediminas Headquarters Battalion; members of the Lithuanian army volunteer union; employees of Lithuanian Post; journalists; Family Card holders; students of Vilnius Academy of Arts; students of the Faculty of History at Vilnius University; citizens of Ukraine; organised migrant groups; all visitors on the last Sunday of each month.
Educational activities of the National Museum of Lithuania’s expositional locations are free of charge for the following visitors:
children under 3 years of age; residents of children care homes and socially supported children; people with a disability and their one accompanying person; teachers accompanying groups of schoolchildren.
Concessions are applied upon the visitor providing valid ID that prooves right to specific concessions. This ID requirement does not apply to pre-school children and all visitors on the last Sunday of each month.
The exhibition “Understanding Lithuania” has been displayed in the following six halls: Creation, Beliefs, Battles, Turning Points, Global Ties, and Faces. An audio guide will help you get a better understanding of the themes, available in QR codes.
The exhibition of the Castellan’s House is accessible to visitors with reduced mobility. The museum’s halls are spread over three floors. The second and third floors can be reached by elevator. Most of the objects are easily accessible and are displayed at a height that is comfortable for all visitors.
The museum’s floor surface has tactile indicators.
The exhibition offers the opportunity to touch replicas of openly displayed objects, thus getting to know them by touch. Information about these exhibits is provided in Braille.
The museum has an electronic guide in sign language.
Exhibitions and events
Guided tour “Understanding Lithuania” (in English)
Event
Various dates: see in the description.
Castellan's House
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About us
The Castellan’s House is the newest exhibition unit of the National Museum of Lithuania, presenting Lithuania’s history, culture and the people who contributed to the country’s development, as well as introducing visitors to the key ideas that shaped Lithuania’s identity.
What will you see?
The main factors which determined Lithuania’s history and culture are presented under the following topics: Creation, Beliefs, Battles, Turning Points, Global Ties, and Faces. Each topic is presented in a separate exhibition hall, covering key events and phenomena from ancient times to the present day. Between a dozen and several dozen concise stories on each topic reflect the country’s experience. The aim is to geographically cover the ever-changing past of Lithuanian history, focusing more on the core of the country.
The main exhibition of the Castellan’s House is complemented by a story in the cellars about the craft of the castellan, castellany, stonemasonry and the history of the city of Vilnius 200 years ago.
What will you learn?
You will experience the development of Lithuania’s history and culture through six topics.
In the Hall of Creativity, you will learn how, being farther away from the great hearths of civilisation, Lithuania has been building bridges of creativity and innovation to the world since ancient times. Although not particularly exclusive, we were inventive: amber travelled to the farthest corners of Europe, baroque art was encouraged by the aesthetic ambitions of the nobility, and ANBO aeroplanes were in no way inferior to their counterparts in the big countries. What the world created or invented, Lithuania extended, supplemented, developed in its own way. Čiurlionis did not invent symbolism, but he intrigued Europe with his distinctive synthesis of music and art. Modernism, brought by energetic enthusiasts, redrew the urbanistic landscape of Kaunas with astonishing speed.
In the Hall of Beliefs, you will learn how faith developed in Lithuania. Animism was a universal phenomenon in prehistory, so in this aspect Lithuania was no different from other countries. However, Lithuania remained the last pagan state in Europe, a kind of island in the Christian world, and this isolation led to a certain stagnation of political and social development. Nevertheless, the pagan rulers were able to impose their rule on Orthodox Russia quite peacefully. While religious wars were raging in Europe, it was, perhaps, the traditions of tolerance and coexistence, developed at that time, that conditioned the issue of a law establishing the equality of all Christian denominations in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania at the end of the 16th century. Lithuania became a homeland for Jewish, Tatar and Karaite communities, and the heritage of Litvak Jews from Lithuania became part of world culture. A late adopter of Christianity, Lithuania eventually became a land inhabited by devout Christians, where the clergy, due to the complex political circumstances (in more recent times as well), played a crucial political and cultural role, and where faith was an important part of identity.
In the Hall of Battles, you will learn how the Balts assimilated new territories, competed with their neighbours, defended and protected those lands. The inhabitants of Lithuania reacted militantly to the Viking raids, the Crusades, the expansion of the Swedes and the Muscovites, organised expansionist raids themselves, expanding their own state, and, when they lost it, they became involved in the battles for independence that swept across Western, Southern and Middle Eastern Europe. Lithuania was not spared by the First and Second World Wars, the latter having left an incurable wound – the Holocaust. The struggle for territory and independence in its various forms continued in the post-war period. Lithuanian warfare experience shows that they attacked their neighbours less often yet defended and fought in their own land more often. Like other European countries, Lithuania was torn by internal conflicts, but confessional disagreements, especially during the Reformation, did not result in human casualties like the religious wars in the Holy Roman Empire, and the internal battles of the nobility in the early modern period could not compare to the medieval War of the Roses in England. In the 19th century, the conflict between the government and society was sparked by semi-secret organisations of students and masons, emulating Western Europe, and after the establishment of the state, a political upheaval was embarked.
In the Hall of Turning Points, you will learn how for Lithuania, which in all historical periods was distant from the centres of civilisation, turning points and reforms often took the form of a sudden breakthrough that overcame underdevelopment. The transition to sedentary agriculture was relatively slow in prehistory, but the adoption of Christianity and culture of writing in the Middle Ages, or the agricultural and industrial reforms of the 20th century, happened quickly. But in some cases, being “late” was advantageous and allowed to learn lessons better. For instance, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was Europe’s most sustainable political union, which established a unique “electoral society”, produced Europe’s first democratic constitution, and which is seen as a sort of predecessor to the pre-modern European Union.
In the Hall of Global Connections, you will learn that Lithuania had long been seen as a land of sedentary farmers, stretching along the eastern coast of the Baltic Sea. However, we can also present Lithuania through the metaphor of a never-ending journey, we can see it as a constant movement – a country that is being travelled to or moved to, a land where ordinary migrants, famous travellers, pilgrims, and discoverers were born and from where they have spread out to the distant corners of the world. Moreover, Lithuania repeatedly became a connecting gate between different cultures, found itself at geopolitical crossroads, or was the first stepping stone for large foreign armies. In general, separate Lithuanian areals of people and cultures are found all over the world: from South Africa to the Laptev Sea, from Santiago in Chile to Chistye Prudy in Kaliningrad. Lithuania’s dynamic and dramatic journey through time and space was changing the country itself and the surrounding world.
In the Hall of Faces, you will see portraits of the most prominent personalities who contributed to the development of Lithuanian statehood. Here you will meet people who dedicated their lives to making Lithuania live and thrive. You will see the fighters for our freedom, who with their courage and determination contributed to the preservation of the Lithuanian state and the idea of freedom. You will meet the artists and scientists who created and promoted the country’s culture and enriched the world of science with their discoveries. You will see influential figures of the Church, through whose efforts the Gospel message reached and took firm root in the hearts of the compatriots. You will see images of great state leaders – from Vytautas the Great to the initiators of the Reform Movement of Lithuania. You will discover Lithuanian philanthropists whose support made it possible to bring about the visions of the future state.
History of the building
The House of the Castellan we see now was built after the fire in Vilnius in 1610. Archaeologists did not find cultural layers of the 15th or 16th century, the masonry also shows that the house was built by bricklaying it to the retaining wall, and only the top of the retaining wall remained in the eaves. There are four basements below the house, with thick walls supporting the vaults and holding up the upper rooms.
The house of the castellan with four separate entrances to the cellars is a unique monument of Lithuanian castles of the 16th–17th centuries; there were also castellans in other towns of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, but nothing is known of any houses built especially for them. Although its structure is reminiscent of simple Gothic and Renaissance townhouses, the House of the Castellan is distinguished by its position, as there is no street in front of the façade, only a courtyard, and the entrances to the cellars do not interfere with the movement of the visitors of the courtyard, on the contrary – they create an interesting urban view, opening up the entire façade. Since 1958, it had housed the collections of the Museum of History and Ethnography, and for a while the premises were used by the museum administration. Since 2000, the Restoration Centre of the National Museum of Lithuania had been located in the Castellan’s House.