Lithuanian Cities – Kaunas

A panorama of Kaunas. To the right in the foreground rises the Church of the Assumption (also known as Vytautas the Great Church), with the Cathedral Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul behind it. At the centre stands the House of Perkūnas. To the left in the background the towers of the Jesuit Church of St Francis Xavier soar skyward, while Kaunas Castle is visible at the upper left edge. The upper right depicts symbols of the city's interwar modernity: the Central Post Office and the Resurrection Basilica. Organic natural forms at the lower left create a vivid contrast with the strict urban geometry. The inscription "KAUNAS" runs along the top, "LIETUVA" along the bottom; the Lithuanian mint mark and the year "2026" appear at lower left, the designer Tomas Dragūnas's initials at upper right.

Kaunas is far more to Lithuania than its second-largest city. Between the world wars, from 1920 to 1939, it served as the provisional capital after Vilnius fell under Polish control — a period in which Kaunas rose to become the effective metropolis of the independent Lithuanian state. During this time a dense fabric of administrative buildings, schools, banks, and cultural institutions took shape, giving the city its distinctive character to this day. The historic city centre combines medieval fabric from the Jagiellonian era with the grand bourgeois architecture of interwar modernism, which in 2015 was added to the UNESCO World Heritage tentative list as the most significant intact ensemble of Central European modernism.

Kaunas's old town, situated at the confluence of the Neris and the Nemunas, preserves evidence of a history reaching back to the 14th century. Gothic sacred buildings, including the Cathedral Basilica of St Peter and St Paul and the Jesuit Church, stand alongside secular civic buildings such as the House of Perkūnas, a late-Gothic structure from the 15th century named after a legend about the ancient Lithuanian god of thunder. As European Capital of Culture in 2022, Kaunas gained greater international recognition — an occasion that underscored the city's reawakened confidence as a cultural centre of Lithuania. The Lithuanian 2-euro commemorative coin of 2026 honours Kaunas, a city whose importance for the country's national identity can hardly be overstated.