Europe's largest Baroque old town — the self-declared Republic of Užupis, cold pink beet soup, and the Jerusalem of Lithuania
Vilnius is the capital of Lithuania and the owner of the largest medieval old town in Eastern Europe — a UNESCO World Heritage Site of Baroque churches (over 40 Catholic, Orthodox, and Gothic buildings in a single compact area), 15th-century university courtyards, and cobblestoned lanes largely intact since the Lithuanian Grand Duchy. The city also contains the Republic of Užupis — a bohemian district on the bank of the Vilnelė River that declared independence in 1998, has its own constitution (displayed on mirrors in 42 languages), its own flag, army of 12, and holidays, the most important o…
Vilnius was legendarily founded by Grand Duke Gediminas around 1323, who dreamed of an iron wolf howling from a hilltop and was told by a pagan high priest that the wolf signified a great city. The city became the capital of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania — one of the largest states in medieval Europe, extending at its greatest extent from the Baltic to the Black Sea — and one of the most important centers of Jewish learning in the world ('the Jerusalem of Lithuania,' home to the Vilna Gaon, the 18th century's most celebrated Talmudic scholar, and a Yiddish-speaking population of 40,000 before…