Vilnius: what to see, where to stay and how to get around
The story the city tells about itself is that Grand Duke Gediminas fell asleep on a hill after hunting and dreamed of an iron wolf howling with the voice of a hundred wolves. His pagan priest read it as an instruction to build a city there whose fame would carry as far as the howling. What is documented is that in 1323 Gediminas wrote letters to the cities of Germany inviting merchants, craftsmen and Jews to come, promising them freedom of religion — and they came. Two hours, and the hill is a climb.
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A short history of Vilnius
Vilnius is first mentioned in 1323, in letters sent by Grand Duke Gediminas to the cities of Europe inviting merchants and craftsmen. It was the capital of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and in 1579 its university was founded, one of the oldest in Eastern Europe. Jews called it 'the Jerusalem of Lithuania', and in the 18th century the Vilna Gaon lived and worked here; he died in 1797. The city was a centre of Torah learning, Yiddish literature and the Zionist movements. Between 1920 and 1939 it was under Polish control. During the Holocaust most of the city's Jews were murdered, many of them in the nearby Ponary forest. In 1990 Lithuania declared independence, and Vilnius became its capital once again.
The ten best sights in Vilnius
1Vilnius CathedralFree, and it stands on a pagan temple to Perkūnas
2Gediminas Tower8 euros with the funicular, and the flag goes up at sunrise
3Palace of the Grand Dukes10 euros, demolished in 1801 and rebuilt on the dug-up foundations
4Vilnius University5 euros for the courtyards, from 1579, and the oldest in the Baltics
5St John’s Church5 euros with the bell tower, 68 metres, and the highest point in the old town
6St Anne’s ChurchFree, late Gothic in thirty-three shapes of brick, and Napoleon wanted it
7Gate of DawnFree, the last of nine city gates, and people kneel in the street below
8St Peter and St PaulFree, and there are about two thousand stucco figures inside it
9St Casimir’s ChurchFree, from 1604, and the crown on top is the grand ducal one
10Holy Spirit ChurchFree, Orthodox, and three uncorrupted bodies lie in a glass case
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What is an audio walk?
Tours in Vilnius →A guide in your headphones: open the walk on our site, walk from stop to stop, and at each one your phone tells its story. No guide, no group, and free. This is the first walk in Vilnius:
Free walking tours in Vilnius
The dream of an iron wolf
The story the city tells about itself is that Grand Duke Gediminas fell asleep on a hill after hunting and dreamed of an iron wolf howling with the voice of a hundred wolves. His pagan priest read it as an instruction to build a city there whose fame would carry as far as the howling. What is documented is that in 1323 Gediminas wrote letters to the cities of Germany inviting merchants, craftsmen and Jews to come, promising them freedom of religion — and they came. Two hours, and the hill is a climb.
- Vilnius Cathedral · Underneath this floor are the foundations of a temple to Perkūnas, the thunder god — Lithuania was the last pagan state in Europe and only accepted Christianity in 1387. The crypt holds the kings and dukes, and a tile in the square outside marked stebuklas, miracle, is where the 1989 human chain to Tallinn began.
- Palace of the Grand Dukes · The Russian authorities pulled the palace down in 1801 and sold the stone. In 2002 parliament voted to rebuild it, and the archaeologists had already dug the foundations out — so what stands now is a modern building on original cellars, and the argument about whether it should have been done at all is still live.
- Gediminas Tower · All that is left of the upper castle, and the hill it stands on has been slipping for years — it is held up now by engineering. On the seventh of October 1988, for the first time since 1940, the Lithuanian tricolour was raised on this tower, and the man who raised it had kept the flag hidden for forty-eight years.
- Three Crosses · White concrete crosses on the hill opposite, first raised in the seventeenth century for Franciscan monks said to have been martyred there. The Soviets dynamited them in 1950 and buried the pieces; in 1989 the broken originals were dug up and laid at the foot of the new ones, where they still are.
- Bernardine Garden · The garden was the monks’ orchard from the fifteenth century, became a public park in 1888, and spent the Soviet period as an amusement ground with a Ferris wheel. It was restored to the botanical layout in 2013, and the stream running through it is the old monastery water channel.
- St Anne’s Church · Thirty-three different shapes of brick were fired to build this facade, which is why the curves work. The story everyone repeats is that Napoleon, passing through in 1812, said he would like to carry it back to Paris in the palm of his hand — and his army then burned the Bernardine monastery next door for firewood.
The Jerusalem of the North
Before 1941 something like forty per cent of Vilnius was Jewish. There were over a hundred synagogues and prayer houses, the Great Synagogue could hold three thousand, the Strashun library was one of the great Jewish libraries of the world, and the city had been the centre of rabbinic learning in Europe since the Vilna Gaon taught here in the eighteenth century. Within three years almost all of it was gone. This walk is what is left and what is marked. Two and a half hours, and some of it is a street with a plaque on it.
- Choral Synagogue · Built in 1903 and the only one of more than a hundred synagogues in Vilnius still standing. It survived because the Germans used it as a medicine store, and then because it was too far from the centre for the Soviets to bother demolishing. About two hundred and fifty people use it now.
- Ghetto Memorial · There were two ghettos here, divided by a street, and the small one was liquidated within six weeks. The site of the Great Synagogue is a few lanes away under a school — it was burned by the Germans and the ruins cleared by the Soviets, who put a kindergarten on top; archaeologists have been digging it out since 2016 and have found the bimah.
- Pilies Street · The oldest street in Vilnius and the one the grand dukes rode down, and the lanes running off its east side were the Jewish quarter — Žydų, Mėsinių, Stiklių. The street names are the originals; the buildings mostly are not, because the quarter was flattened and rebuilt in the 1950s and 60s.
- Vilnius University · Founded by the Jesuits in 1579, which makes it the oldest university in the Baltic states, and it has thirteen courtyards you can walk between. It was closed by the Tsar in 1832 as punishment after the November Uprising and did not reopen for eighty-seven years.
- Museum of Occupations · The building was Gestapo headquarters and then KGB headquarters, and the cells in the basement are left as they were — including the execution room, which was found behind a false wall in 1996 and still has the bullet marks. Names of prisoners are carved into the stone of the outside wall.
- Paneriai Memorial · The Soviets had dug pits in this forest for fuel tanks and never used them. Between 1941 and 1944 about seventy thousand Jews from Vilnius were brought here by train and shot into those pits, along with Poles, Roma and Soviet prisoners. The pits are open and you walk between them on a path through the pines.
A republic across the bridge
On the first of April 1997 the artists living in Užupis, a run-down quarter across a small river from the old town, declared independence. They have a constitution in forty-odd languages on mirrored plates, a flag that changes with the season, a president, an anthem and an army of about eleven men, and on the twenty-third of April the border guards stamp passports. The joke is entirely serious about one thing: the quarter was derelict and squatted, and declaring it a republic is how the people in it stopped it being cleared. Two hours, and the rest of the walk is the green half of the city.
- Užupis · The constitution has forty-one articles on mirrored plates, and they include the right to be happy, the right to be unhappy, the right to be idle, the right to look after a dog until one of you dies, and the article that a dog has the right to be a dog. The last three are: do not defeat, do not fight back, do not surrender.
- Užupis Angel · The square had a giant egg on a column for two years while the money for the angel was raised; when the angel was finally cast in 2002 the egg was auctioned off and now stands outside a shop elsewhere in the city. The angel blowing a trumpet is meant to mark the quarter’s rebirth.
- MO Museum · A couple of doctors spent twenty years buying Lithuanian art nobody else was collecting — Soviet-era work that was not approved and work from the 1990s — and then commissioned Daniel Libeskind to build a museum for it, which opened in 2018. There was no public money in any of it.
- Lukiškės Prison · Built in 1904 for the Russian empire with a church in the middle so every wing could see it, and it held prisoners continuously for a hundred and fifteen years until it closed in 2019. It is now rented out for concerts and filming, and the cells are exactly as the last prisoners left them.
- Lukiškės Square · This is where the Tsar hanged the leaders of the 1863 uprising in public, and where a bronze Lenin stood from 1952 until a crane took him away in August 1991 in front of a crowd. What should replace him has been argued about ever since, and the square is currently grass.
- Vingis Park · A hundred and sixty hectares inside a loop of the river Neris, and the open-air stage in it holds the Song Festival every four years — about twelve thousand singers. In January 1991 this park was where crowds gathered when Soviet troops moved on the television tower a kilometre away.
Getting to Vilnius and getting around
- Vilnius Airport · Six kilometres out, and a train to the centre takes seven minutes
- Railway Station · Trains to Kaunas and Warsaw, and the old town starts behind it
- Bus Station · Buses to Riga, Warsaw and Minsk, and across the road from the trains
- Cathedral Square · The centre of everything, and the old town is ten minutes south
Cheap eats in Vilnius
Eight counters where Vilnius eats standing. Cepelinai are the national dish — grated potato dumplings the size and shape of a zeppelin, stuffed with minced meat and served under bacon and sour cream, about eight euros for two and more than enough. In summer the thing to order is šaltibarščiai, a cold beetroot and kefir soup that is bright pink, served with hot boiled potatoes on the side. Kibinai, meat pastries, come from the Karaim at Trakai.
- Halės Market · Open 7 to 4, closed Monday, and cash is easier
- Kalvarijų Market · Across the river, where the city shops, and best on Saturday
- Lokys · About 20 euros a main, and book in the evening
- Bernelių Užeiga · Cepelinai done properly, about 9 euros, and portions for two
- Senoji Trobelė · Village food in a wooden room, and the queue is locals at one
- Pinavija · A bakery open round the clock, and the cake counter at three in the morning
- Džiaugsmas · Modern Lithuanian, a set menu, and about 50 euros a head
- Alaus Biblioteka · A glass is about 4 euros, and ask what is sour
Museums in Vilnius
- Museum of Occupations · 6 euros, two hours, and the outside wall carries the names
- MO Museum · 9 euros, Libeskind, and the collection is 1960 onwards
- National Museum of Lithuania · 4 euros, under the castle hill, and the folk rooms are the best
- National Gallery of Art · 6 euros, across the river, and free on the last Sunday
- Palace of the Grand Dukes · 10 euros, and the cellars with the original foundations are included
- Vilnius Picture Gallery · 4 euros, in a palace on Didžioji, and the portraits are the collection
- Energy and Technology Museum · 7 euros, in the 1903 power station, and the turbines are still in place
- Vilnius University · 5 euros for the courtyards, and the library frescoes are 1803
Parks and gardens in Vilnius
More than half of Vilnius is green space, which is unusual for a capital and is mostly an accident of the city never having had the industry to fill it. There are sandstone cliffs and a pine forest inside the city boundary, and three lakes you can swim in within half an hour.
- Kalnai Park · Free, ten minutes up from the Bernardine garden
- Vingis Park · Free, 160 hectares in a river bend, and the biggest in the city
- Pavilniai Regional Park · Free, bus 11 to the edge, and the trails are marked
- Sapiegos Park · Free, a baroque palace park restored in 2023, and nearly empty
- Bernardine Garden · Free, and the musical fountain plays on the hour in summer
- Green Lakes · Free, 20 minutes north, and the water is warm by July
- Verkiai Palace · Free grounds, a classical palace above the river, and a watermill
- Belmontas · Free, a waterfall and an old mill in a ravine, and ten minutes out
Things to do in Vilnius with kids
- Gediminas funicular · 2 euros each way, 35 seconds, and it saves the climb
- Trakai Island Castle · 12 euros, a real castle on an island, and boats to row round it
- Energy and Technology Museum · 7 euros, turbines, levers and switches, and most can be touched
- TV Tower · 10 euros, 165 metres up in a revolving café, and it turns slowly
- Europos Parkas · From 10 euros, 30 minutes out, and 55 hectares of sculpture
- Bernardine Garden · Free, a big playground and a fountain, and shade
- Green Lakes · Free, sand beaches and shallow water, and 20 minutes out
- Akropolis · The indoor option, and there is an ice rink in the middle
Nightlife in Vilnius
Vilnius is small and everything is within a twenty-minute walk, which is why the night moves rather than settles — the old town bars fill first, Užupis takes over after eleven, and the two serious clubs are out towards the station. Nothing is expensive: a beer is three or four euros even in the centre.
- Užupis · The bars along the river, and they run until two
- Spunka · A tiny room in Užupis, Lithuanian craft beer, and people stand outside
- Alaus Biblioteka · Forty taps of farmhouse beer, and ask them what is sour
- Loftas · From 15 euros, and nothing starts before ten
- Opium Club · The techno room, and it does not fill until one
- Vokiečių Street · Terraces down both sides in summer, and the loudest street
- Paupys · The new quarter by the river, bars and a food hall, and quieter
- Gediminas Avenue · Closed to cars at weekends in summer, and the whole city walks it
Holy places in Vilnius
Lithuania was the last country in Europe to accept Christianity, in 1387, and then became one of the most Catholic — there are about forty churches in the old town alone. The Gate of Dawn icon draws pilgrims from Poland, and the Orthodox and Jewish layers are here too.
- Gate of Dawn · Free, and the chapel is up a staircase from the street
- St Peter and St Paul · Free, 20 minutes’ walk from the old town, and worth it
- St Anne’s Church · Free, thirty-three shapes of brick, and the best facade in the city
- Holy Spirit Church · Free, Orthodox, and women cover their hair at the door
- Vilnius Cathedral · Free, and the crypt with the royal tombs is a separate tour
- Choral Synagogue · From 1903, the only one of a hundred left, and still in use
- Rasos Cemetery · Free, 20 minutes from the old town, and quiet
- Kernavė · Free, 35 kilometres out, five hill forts, and the first capital
Frequently asked questions about Vilnius
What is there to see in Vilnius?
The top sights in Vilnius are Vilnius Cathedral, Gediminas Tower and Palace of the Grand Dukes. The full list on this page has 10 sights, each with a photo and a short note.
How many days do you need in Vilnius?
Three to four days are enough to see the best of Vilnius without rushing, including at least one walking tour.
Is there a free walking tour in Vilnius?
Yes. sleepntrip has 3 free audio walks in Vilnius, with no guide and no group: your phone tells the story at every stop. The first one: The dream of an iron wolf.
How do you get to Vilnius and get around?
The main ways are Vilnius Airport, Railway Station and Bus Station. Full details are in the transport section on this page.
Where to stay in Vilnius, and for how much?
sleepntrip shows only rooms in Vilnius that meet nine conditions: a good location, high guest scores, cleanliness, and a price of up to $80 a night for two. Pick your dates and see what is free.
Looking for a hotel in Vilnius for your dates?
Only rooms that meet nine conditions, up to $80 a night.