Kaunas stores its past in layers: a 14th-century castle that faced the Teutonic Order, a tsarist fortress ring that became killing ground in 1941, and the ministries of the provisional capital of 1920–1939. Three days follow that chain in order.
Lithuania's oldest stone fortress, raised in the mid-14th century where the Neris meets the Nemunas and stormed by the Teutonic Order in 1362. One round tower, the gothic curtain wall and a bastion survive, with siege exhibits inside.
A late-Gothic red-brick merchant house from around 1500, built by Hanseatic traders and later run as a Jesuit chapel. It took its name from a pagan Perkūnas idol reportedly found in a wall niche in 1818; inside is an Adam Mickiewicz memorial room.
The oldest Gothic church in the city, founded by Grand Duke Vytautas around 1400 in gratitude for surviving the Battle of the Vorskla. Used as a Russian Orthodox church and an ammunition store; flood marks on the outer wall record the 1946 Nemunas rising.
The largest Gothic church in Lithuania, begun in the early 15th century and given a Baroque interior of nine altars after fires and wars. The poet Maironis lies in the tomb built into the south wall; the free-standing belfry dates from 1771.
Part of the tsarist fortress ring finished in 1913, later a Soviet transit prison, then the place where roughly 50,000 people — most of them Jews from Kaunas and Western Europe — were murdered between 1941 and 1944. Cells and execution field are preserved.
White modernist church by Karolis Reisonas, begun in 1934 as a national monument to regained independence, converted by the Soviets into a radio-factory floor, and finally consecrated in 2004. Its 70m tower rises over the Žaliakalnis ridge.
The national military museum, opened in 1936 in Unity Square, running from Iron Age weapons to the partisan war. Its centrepiece is the wreckage of the Lituanica, flown by Darius and Girėnas from New York and crashed near Soldin in July 1933.
One of the oldest working funiculars in Europe, opened in 1931 to link the interwar city centre with the new Žaliakalnis suburb. The wooden carriage, brass fittings and manual operator's cabin are all original and still in daily service.
Built 1882–1890 as part of the Kaunas Fortress, it saw the German assault of 1915 and in July 1941 became the site of one of the first mass killings of the Holocaust, with some 5,000 victims. Now a privately run museum with open earthworks and tunnels.
The former Japanese consulate where vice-consul Chiune Sugihara hand-wrote transit visas through summer 1940 for thousands of Jewish refugees, working against his ministry's orders until the building was closed and he left by train.
Seat of the three interwar presidents — Smetona, Stulginskis and Grinius — from 1920 to 1940, when Kaunas held the state after Poland took Vilnius. Restored cabinet rooms, the 1926 coup exhibits and the presidents' statues in the garden.
The riverside district across the Neris where roughly 30,000 Jews were confined from August 1941 behind a fence along Panerių and Demokratų streets. The wooden houses, the ghetto gate marker and the Jewish cemetery on Radvilėnų remain.