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Vilnius Old Town

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Also known as Vilnius Historic Centre, Vilnius Historic Center

UNESCO World Heritage Site in Vilnius, Lithuania

Key facts

Location
Vilnius , Vilnius County , Lithuania
Criteria
Cultural: (ii), (iv)
Reference
541bis
Inscription
1994 (18th Session )
Area
352.09 ha (870.0 acres)
Buffer zone
1,912.24 ha (4,725.2 acres)

via Wikipedia infobox

~4 min read

Encyclopedic overview

Location of Senamiestis Eldership

The Old Town of Vilnius (Lithuanian: Vilniaus senamiestis), one of the largest surviving medieval old towns in Northern Europe, as inscribed within UNESCO World Heritage Sites, has an area of 3.59 square kilometres (887 acres). It encompasses 74 quarters, with 70 streets and lanes numbering 1487 buildings with a total floor area of 1,497,000 square meters. The administrative division of the Old Town (senamiesčio seniūnija) is a larger territory and comprises more than 4.5 square kilometres. It was founded by the Lithuanian Grand Duke and King of Poland Jogaila in 1387 on the Magdeburg rights the oldest part of the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius, it had been developed over the course of many centuries, and has been shaped by the city's history and a constantly changing cultural influence. It is a place where some of Europe's greatest architectural styles—gothic, renaissance, baroque and neoclassical—stand side by side and complement each other. There are many Catholic, Lutheran and Orthodox churches, residential houses, cultural and architectural monuments, museums in the Old Town.

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Vilnius Old Town” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.

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