Lithuania's Port on the Baltic — the Hansa trading city at the gateway to the Curonian Spit, one of the longest sand dune peninsulas on Earth and a UNESCO World Heritage Site shared with Russia
Klaipėda is Lithuania's third city and its only seaport — a Hanseatic trading city that changed German, French, and Lithuanian hands repeatedly over eight centuries before being incorporated into independent Lithuania in 1923. The city straddles the narrow strait (Dane River mouth) between the Curonian Lagoon and the Baltic Sea, and its main attraction is also its neighbour: the Curonian Spit, a 98 km long, 4 km wide sand dune peninsula that extends south from Klaipėda to Kaliningrad, Russia — one of the longest sand formations of its kind on Earth, and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The Spit'…
The site of Klaipėda was settled by Baltic Curonians before a German crusading order (the Teutonic Knights' Livonian branch) built a castle here in 1252, naming it Memel. For most of its history it was Memel — a German Hanseatic trading city under the Teutonic Knights, then Prussia, then German Empire. The region's population was ethnically and linguistically mixed: Memelland Germans, Klaipėda Lithuanians (Klaipėdiečiai), and Jewish merchants. After WWI, Memel was detached from Germany as a League of Nations mandate; France administered it from 1920 until Lithuanian irregular forces seized it…