Photo: Augustas Didžgalvis, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
Built from the 17th century as a Camaldolese monastery, this is a riot of Baroque thanks to its Italian architects and sculptors. During the 19th / 20th centuries the complex was variously a military stables, psychiatric hospital and art gallery but restored as a convent in the 1990s. The main sight is the Church of the Visitation.
Pažaislis Monastery and the Church of the Visitation form the largest monastery complex in Lithuania, and the most renowned example of Baroque architecture in the country. The church is the most marble-decorated Baroque church of the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania.
© OpenStreetMap contributors
Within Ąžuolynas Park, this was renovated in 2023 and now offers a better experience for animals and visitors.
Large athletics stadium (capacity 10,000) plus indoor hall and sports science facilities.
Diplomats for Life
In 1940 thousands of Jews from Poland and Lithuania were desperate to get out, but they needed visas. The Dutch issued many visas for Curaçao and their Caribbean colonies, but getting there became much more difficult when Italy joined the Nazis and closed the Med. The main escape route was then across the USSR to the Pacific. In Kaunas the Japanese vice-consul Chiune Sugihara (1900-86) issued hundreds of Japanese transit visas, blithely disregarding orders to conduct all sorts of checks. He may have saved thousands of lives, as a whole family could travel on one visa; from Japan they moved on to North America and elsewhere. His mission ended when the embassy closed, Germany crushed Lithuania, and anyone who hadn't got out was exterminated. Sugihara spent his later years in obscurity in Japan; his Kaunas residence is now this museum.
Dinky little whitewashed brick mosque and minaret built in 1930. The city's first Muslims were Tatars in the 15th century, and this patch was their graveyard, hence the street name Totoriu. It was their quarter of Ramybė Park, which elsewhere interred Catholics, Lutherans and Orthodox. Eventually a wooden mosque, imam's house and school appeared on the site.