Kaunas: interwar modernist architecture

Provisional capital of Lithuania between the two world wars, Kaunas preserves one of Europe's best-kept collections of modernist architecture.

The center, celebrated for its interwar modernist architecture, can be comfortably visited on foot.

The Castle of Kaunas, a Gothic fortress from the fourteenth century, remains the oldest defensive monument of the city at the confluence of two rivers.

Just steps away, Liberty Avenue, a pedestrian walkway nearly two kilometers long, remains flanked by modernist buildings constructed during the period of provisional capital.

Continuing you visit the Museum of the Devil, which displays over three thousand figurines depicting the devil collected by a single Lithuanian collector.

Toward evening, the Old Town quarter animates restaurants and nightlife around the Gothic cathedral in red brick.

Kaunas was Lithuania's temporary capital between 1920 and 1939, when Vilnius was under Polish control, a period that brought a flourishing of European modernist architecture now a UNESCO World Heritage site and destination for design enthusiasts.

The Kaunas Museum of the Devil houses statuettes from dozens of different countries, donated almost entirely by a single Lithuanian collector who lived around the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, now supplemented with new acquisitions.