Guide to Lithuania
Must See Lithuania
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Tiny Vilnius is full of astonishing contrasts - eerie courtyards, an eccentric artist community, awesome arts and beautiful Baroque. Its natural treasures - forests, lakes and a magical spit of sand - and oddities like the Hill of Crosses and Soviet sculpture park add a uniqueness found nowhere else.
Its chocolate-box Baroque and skyline littered with church spires are intoxicating, decadent and fragile - so much so that Unesco has declared this, Europe's largest Baroque old town, a World Heritage site. But there is also an underlying oddness that creates Vilnius' soul.
Where else could there be the world's only statue of psychedelic musician Frank Zappa? Or a self-proclaimed independent republic inhabited by artists and dreaming bohemians? Where else is there the spirit of freedom and resistance that existed during Soviet occupation?