Kaunas
— — the city that built itself in the years it had.
Not only on a wall.
“Lithuania's second city, set where the Neris flows into the Nemunas. Between the world wars, when Vilnius lay under Polish rule, Kaunas served as the country's provisional capital. The young republic spent two decades building itself a modern downtown in pale rendered concrete and stripped classical lines, and most of it is still standing. The old town below holds a thirteenth-century castle on the river bend. from the studio
Kaunas, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Kaunas is Lithuania's second-largest city, home to roughly 290,000 people, set in the centre of the country where the Neris flows into the Nemunas. The old town climbs from the meeting of the rivers below Kaunas Castle, a Teutonic-era fortification first recorded in the thirteenth century. The city served as the country's provisional capital between 1919 and 1939, while the historic capital Vilnius was held by interwar Poland, and the modern downtown carries the unmistakable imprint of that period. Kaunas was a European Capital of Culture in 2022.
Between 1919 and 1939 the provisional capital built itself almost from scratch, and most of what went up still stands. Kaunas's interwar architects, chief among them Vytautas Landsbergis-Žemkalnis and Arnas Funkas, worked in a stripped modernist idiom of pale rendered concrete, slim steel windows, and sharp horizontal mouldings. The Christ's Resurrection Basilica on Žaliakalnis hill, begun in 1934 and finally consecrated in 2004, is the period's tallest landmark. UNESCO inscribed the surviving ensemble in 2023 under the title Modernist Kaunas: Architecture of Optimism, 1919 to 1939.
Kaunas is reached in about an hour from Vilnius by road or rail; the city's small airport handles regional flights from Western and Northern Europe. Kaunas Castle and the old town sit at the western tip of the spit where the rivers meet and are walkable in an afternoon. The interwar core lies east along Laisvės Alėja, the long pedestrian avenue that runs from the old town toward the basilica on the hill. Summer is short and warm; winter brings real cold and the rivers freeze along their slower banks each year.