Plan your visit
The ticket office closes 30 minutes before closing time.
Ticket prices
- Adult – 6,00 €
- Concessions* – 3,00 €
Family ticket
- 1 adult and up to 4 children – 9,00 €
- 1 adult and 1-4 children with the opportunity to participate in educational activities – 12,00 €
- Up to 2 adults and 4 children – 15,00 €
- Up to 2 adults and 1-4 children with the opportunity to participate in educational activities – 18,00 €
Additional services
- Themed guided tour in Lithuanian or foreign language – 15,00 € (museum tickets not included)
- Guided tour during predetermined dates, per person – 2,00 € (museum ticket not included)
- Admission to educational activities for children ages 4 and up, and school students – 3,00 €
- Admission to educational activities for adults – 3,00 € (museum ticket not included)
- Admission to virtual educational activities for school students – 2,00 €
- Audioguide – free of charge
Combo tickets
- Museums in Vilnius (every branch of National Museum of Lithuania that is located in Vilnius) – 30,00 €
Expositions are 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.
Information for disabled visitors: the main exhibition halls of the Bastion of the Vilnius Defence Wall have wheelchair access. Video guides in Lithuanian Sign Language are available, as well as partial exposition descriptions in braille.
General visitor regulations of the National Museum of Lithuania
The tours in the museum are only led by the museum tour guides or the tour guides from the institution with which the museum has concluded an appropriate agreement.
Exhibitions and events
QALQAN. Symbols of Crimean Tatars
Exhibition
2024 10 09 – 2025 04 27
The Bastion of the Vilnius Defence Wall
About us
The museum at the Bastion of the Vilnius Defence Wall tells the history of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania’s weaponry and defence practices.
What will you see?
Artillery weapons and small salute canons used for events, as well as smaller calibre weapons; a long speared gun called an arquebus, a hand grenade, a pistol and a rifle; elements from 17th–18th century Grand Duchy of Lithuania soldiers’ armour – helmets, breastplates, half-armour. The history of Vilnius and its defence is further illuminated by such exhibition pieces as an executioner’s sword, locks from the gates of the Vilnius defence wall, etchings and sketches of city plans, and intriguing excerpts from Kazimieras Simonavičius’s mid-17th century work “The Great Art of Artillery”.
What will you learn?
The Grand Duchy of Lithuania’s defence history is varied and full of intriguing historical facts, which are reflected in the Bastion Museum exhibition: hussar cavalrymen adorned with wings; the first European textbook about artillery, by Kazimieras Simonavičius, whose visionary ideas included plans for a multi-level space rockets; images of Our Lady of the Gates of Dawn on soldiers’ breastplates…
While telling the story of the city’s past, the more than 400-year-old Bastion raises a multitude of intriguing questions: how did the residents of 16th century Vilnius defend themselves while the defence wall was being built? How many gates did it have and what kinds of locks were used to secure them? Did the city’s executioner really live next to the Bastion? Where in the Bastion is the treasure of the cursed maiden hidden? And did the Basilisk that allegedly lived in a cave in the Bastion hill and kept the city in terrors hundreds of years ago really exist?
History of the building
The territory of the Vilnius Upper and Lower Castles was well fortified from older times. When Vilnius began to grow in the 15th century, the city’s territory expanded and its castles could not provide sufficient protection to the townspeople. Both a growing centralized Russia and constant Tatar attacks presented threats to both Vilnius and the entire Grand Duchy of Lithuania.
In 1503 Lithuanian Grand Duke Alexander satisfied Vilnius residents’ requests that a stone defence wall be built around the city. Eventually, most likely at the beginning of the 18th century, one part of the wall also became a defence structure – a bastion consisting of a tower, a horseshoe-shaped space for artillery, and a tunnel connecting the two. It is thought that the building was designed by the military engineer Fryderyk Getkant.
The bastion and the city defence wall suffered considerable damage during the mid-17th century, during the war with Moscow. Having lost its defence function, the bastion fell to disrepair – its territory was turned into a garbage dump and former trenches and stonework were buried.
Thorough analysis of this site began in 1965, and over the following two decades the bastion was unearthed and reconstructed. Today the Vilnius Bastion is the only heritage building of this sort in Lithuania. The museum contains the story of Lithuania’s defence during many challenging centuries.
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