Arriving in Vilnius, fast growing city in the Baltics, seems to be in an era of building and rebuilding. Bus stopped briefly at a large shiny mall, Panorama, before heading to the main station which is closer to the old town.
I soon headed down to the main city square and the Cathedral. Inside the cavernous area various rooms set off to the side, one holding a reliquary, others host paintings. But it's the main hulking nave with high ceiling that has tourists gawping.
Onto the the Palace of Dukes, like most museum and galleries in the Baltics you are directed to leave your jacket in the coatroom before entering. This has 4 paths through the museum. Path 1 begins back in time with archeological interests, with the underlying foundations on display, this meanders through many rooms as it's a big complex building. After about 45 minutes or so, I finish Path 1 and realise I might not have much time for other paths as they close in an hour or so. Path 2 is similary long, but leading through amazing grand reconstructed rooms with artworks, very swish! At one point the path leads up 6 floors to a viewpoint and then back down. With half an hour to go, it looked like Path 3 was closed, as quite often they don't let entry to museum with less than an hour to go, however the security guard let me through telling me to be quick (he obviously wanted to go home!). Path 3 & 4 were quite a bit shorter, covering weaponry and honours/medals. Got jacket from cloakroom and out before they closed. Baltics are on a fairly similar Latitude as Scotland (albeit 2 hours forward), so stays light late. Time for a walk up the Castle Tower hill, winding path round 3/4 of the hill to get to the ascent path. Went I puffed my way to the top, could see the funicular rail for the easy route to the top. Still not actually that high, probably about same as Calton Hill in Edinbugh, a good viewpoint across the city. Vilnius seems to be a bit of a hodgepodge of architecture from different eras. Walking between the hotel to the old town, go through new shopfronts, but also some dilapidated building with chunks of plaster missing, alongside the ever present roadworks with orange coats digging up the streets.
Another museum, The Old Arsenal. What was Wenger thinking sending Walcott on that early? No, no that Arsenal, but lots of old weaponry, just popped in here, as it was on my way to the Applied Art museum, which had a sign outside advertising Chagal, Picasso & Ernst. However, it was more pottery and textiles, with most of actually made by other artists, but using them as inspiration.
Next up with the Former KGB Detention House, set in a rather grim building, it highlights life behind the Iron Curtain and the contradictions to everyday life. Various rooms go through home life, working, party meetings etc. This was well laid out with good boards in English:
Somone once said that Brezhnev-era society could be best understood through the myth of Sisyphius: People would keep rolling the boulder uphill, despite the meaninglessness of the act of rolling, the boulder, and ever the top of the hill itself, whic no one believed existed anyway. In truth, boulder-rollers in the late Soviet period cuold at least ironically paraphrase the words uetter by Josef Stalin in the 1935: "Life has become better! And happier, too!"
Next day, it was onto the Museum of Illusions, which has some nice optical illusions and holograms. Seen quite a few of them before, but a couple of new ones, such as a Tie Fighter etched into a record. Also a clever display with feathers being moved in slow motion, some magic with strobe lights I think. Ther was a touch illusion that was supposed to make wire feel like velvet, didn't seem to work with me, maybe I need new hands!
On the way to the House of Histories, I briefly stopped into the Lithuanian independence museum, about the people that helped reclaim independence, not much for the causal tourist here, skippable!
Couple of exhibits, one about Lithunian emmigrating abroad, also the flow of people (and money!) back into the country in the post-Soviet era. The other exhibits was somewhat bizarre about conspiracy theories with Moon Landings, 5G, Coronavirus & JFK all making appearances.
Another day, visited the Radvila Palace Art which one wing classical Western Art and the main wing has Modern Art. Pick of the bunch was a weird video installation with a big cinema screen in the dark. You could lie on a lounger and watch the short movie which, as far as I could tell, was about a mermaid swimming near a nuclear plant. Like a lot of these big government museum, there has hardly anybody else there! Maybe it's still low season, or a coach full of tourists pulls up to swamp the place.
Finally before my pass rans out goto the new MO Modern Art museum, another exhibition about conspiracy theories, what is going on here? On the plus side, I didn't bump into Vilnius born Hannibal Lecter. Listened to some live music as walked past Lucille Blues Bar, the guitarist/singer was certainly into it, in this tiny bar.
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