Kaunas spent two decades as Lithuania's makeshift capital and built itself a whole modernist city in the process — 6,000 buildings, a UNESCO listing, and museums holding art nobody else has. The galleries are small, cheap and genuinely strange.
Holds the world's only substantial collection of Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis — around 200 paintings plus his musical scores, hung in darkened rooms because the pastels are light-sensitive. Open Tue–Sun 11:00–17:00, closed Mondays.
The 1936 museum building anchors Unity Square, with the Garden's busts of Lithuanian cultural figures and the Freedom Monument. The carillon in the tower plays at noon Sunday. Open Tue–Sun 10:00–17:00.
Feliksas Vizbaras's 1931 masterpiece on Laisvės Alėja 102 and the emblem of Kaunas modernism — a vaulted hall of Lithuanian folk-pattern floor tiles, brass and travertine. The interior reopened after restoration as a cultural venue.
Donelaičio 16 branch of the national museum, showing 20th-century and contemporary Lithuanian art plus the Fluxus cabinet devoted to George Maciunas, the Kaunas-born founder of the movement. Tue–Sun 11:00–17:00.
Antanas Žmuidzinavičius spent his life collecting devils; the museum now holds over 3,000 from 70 countries, including a Hitler-and-Stalin pair dancing on a Lithuania of bones. Putvinskio 64, Tue–Sun 11:00–17:00.
The 1892 theatre in the middle of the City Garden stages operetta, musicals and opera; the garden outside holds the memorial stone to Romas Kalanta, who self-immolated here in 1972 and triggered the Kaunas Spring riots.
Nepriklausomybės Square 12, a brutalist 1989 block housing a private collector's bequest — Rubens, Egyptian and Greek antiquities, Meissen porcelain. The nude bronze Man out front caused a scandal on unveiling. Tue–Sun 11:00–17:00.
Sapiegos 5, in the 1928 Palace of Justice where the Lithuanian parliament sat during the interwar years. Season runs September to June with chamber and symphonic concerts most evenings in a 500-seat hall.
Žaliakalnis hill, Karolis Reisonas's 1934 white modernist church — 70m long, a 70m tower, used as a radio factory under the Soviets and finally consecrated in 2004. The rooftop terrace opens onto the whole valley.
The Wise Old Man mural on Jonavos 3, Tadas Šimkus's Rooster near the market and dozens of smaller pieces mark the legacy of Kaunas 2022, when the city was European Capital of Culture. Best walked between Jonavos and the riverfront.
Vilniaus 22 in the Old Town runs rotating shows by living Lithuanian photographers and hosts the oldest photography gallery in the country, founded 1974. Free entry, Tue–Fri 11:00–18:00, Sat until 16:00.
Rotušės 13, the baroque house where the poet-priest Maironis lived until 1932, preserved with his furniture and library. The cellars hold exhibits on writers deported to Siberia and the samizdat presses of the resistance.