St. Casimir Fair Tour / March 3 -10

After breakfast, you will tour Kaunas, Lithuania’s second-largest city. You will see the city center and Old Town, which has its prominent historical and architectural monuments, including St. George’s Church, Kaunas Castle, built at the confluence of the Nemunas and Neris rivers, the Town Hall Square, surrounded by former 16th – 18th century merchants’ dwelling houses and baroque churches – the Jesuit Church, the Cathedral, and the Church of Vytautas dating back to the 14th century. The morning tour will end with a visit to the Gallery of Čiurlionis, the prominent Lithuanian painter and composer whose  150th birth anniversary will be wide ly commemorated in Lithuania and around the world in 2025.

In the afternoon, during the tour of an impressive Art Deco Museum – Apartment, you will get to know how thousands of Kaunas citizens lived between the wars. Kaunas is famous for its unique Modernism architecture of the interwar period, which is something to explore in Town. In 2023. Kaunas interwar architecture was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List.

After breakfast, you will depart for Hill of Crosses (155 km from Kaunas), one of the most revered places in Lithuania. It is a place where thousands of crosses were placed by people asking God for special favors or thanking God for favors granted.

Then continue on to Pakruojis Manor, one of the largest surviving ensembles of manor estates in Lithuania. One of its most distinctive features is the live historical reenactments that bring the  estate’s past to life. Tour of the manor will include visiting Cabinet de Secret.  It is where aristocrats held secret meetings, spread secrets and intrigues, and gambled. Another place of a visit will be Panopticum (Post Mortem Room), introducing the ancient burial customs: burning a graven candle (grabnyčia) overnight, mourning the lost ones, photographing the dead, wearing mourning attributes. The tour will end with with liqueur tasting in the old Distillery. Drive to Vilnius (185 km). 

Overnight at the Artis Hotel Centrum or similar.

After breakfast, you will tour Vilnius Old Town, a UNESCO World Heritage site highlighting the main attractions of the Old Town with its endless church domes, steeples, and gloriously restored buildings. The tour begins at Cathedral Square dominated by the Cathedral itself. There you will visit cathedral catacombs. Then via the President’s Palace to Vilnius University. After visiting the University courtyards, the tour continues along the main street of the Old Town, Pilies St., to the Gothic corner of Vilnius, showing St. Anne’s Church. Then, the walking continues to the only remaining city gate, the Gate of Dawn, famous for its miraculous icon of The Virgin Mary, and ends at the old Town Hall Square.

A tour in the afternoon will include a visit to the Palace of Grand Dukes. During the excursion you will see surviving authentic Walls from various periods of the early castle, the rich collection of unique archaeological artefacts as well as walk through reconstructed rooms and halls representing the Late Gothic, Renaissance and Early Baroque epochs.