Lithuania

Lithuanians were the last pagans in Europe, converting to Christianity only in 1387. In the medieval period the Grand Duchy of Lithuania grew into the largest state on the continent, ruling vast Slavic lands from the Baltic almost to the Black Sea. From 1385 it was joined dynastically, and then constitutionally, with Poland, forming the large multi-ethnic Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth until the partitions of the late eighteenth century erased both states and handed Lithuania to the Russian Empire.

Independence was won in 1918 in wars against Soviet, German, and Polish forces — but Poland seized Vilnius and held it through the interwar years, so Kaunas served as temporary capital. The 1939 Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact assigned Lithuania to the Soviet sphere; occupation in 1940, Nazi occupation from 1941 — when the Holocaust annihilated Lithuania's large and culturally central Jewish community — and Soviet re-occupation followed, with mass deportations to Siberia and a decade-long partisan resistance.

Lithuania led the Baltic independence drive: the Sąjūdis movement, the 1989 Baltic Way, and, in March 1990, it became the first Soviet republic to declare independence restored. Soviet troops killed fourteen unarmed civilians defending the Vilnius TV tower in January 1991 before Moscow relented. Lithuania joined NATO and the EU in 2004 and the euro in 2015, and is now a front-line NATO state, firmly committed to Ukraine and wary of Russia and Belarus.

Lithuanian identity is bound up with the language, the forest, and folk song. The Song Festival, held every four years with tens of thousands of choral singers, is a shared Baltic UNESCO tradition tied to independence, and sutartinės — hypnotic multipart drone songs — are a unique musical form.

Roman Catholicism is a strong and historically resilient part of national identity, from the Gates of Dawn icon in Vilnius to the roadside crosses and shrines that Lithuanian craftsmen are famous for. Basketball is often called the "second religion" — a country of under three million is a genuine world power in the sport.

Užgavėnės, a pre-Lent carnival of grotesque masks and the burning of a straw effigy, and the St Casimir's craft fair (Kaziuko mugė) in Vilnius are the distinctive folk events, and mushroom and berry picking in the extensive forests is a national pastime.

About a fifth of Lithuania's 2.8 million people live in Vilnius, a Baroque city in the east near the Belarusian border; Kaunas, the interwar capital, is the second city; and Klaipėda is the Baltic port, with the resort of Palanga nearby. Much of the country is farmland, lakes, and forest, with a low and, until recently, declining population.

The economy is open and increasingly high-tech — fintech, lasers, biotech, and logistics — closely tied to the EU and the Nordic region. Emigration since EU accession thinned the population, though return migration and immigration have begun to reverse it, and security concerns about Russia and Belarus run through public life; Lithuania hosts the Belarusian opposition in exile.

Daily life is quiet and family-centred: the commute, the market, the sauna, the basketball game, and the summer at a lakeside or coastal house, set against long dark winters.

Lithuanian cooking is northern, hearty, and potato-heavy. Cepelinai — "zeppelins," large grated-potato dumplings stuffed with meat and served with sour cream and pork-fat sauce — are the national dish. Kugelis (a baked potato pudding), bulviniai blynai (potato pancakes), and šaltibarščiai, a shocking-pink cold beet-and-kefir soup eaten in summer with hot boiled potatoes, are everyday staples.

Kibinai, the Karaim community's crescent-shaped meat pastries from Trakai, are a regional favourite; smoked pig's ears, cold-smoked meats, curd cheese, dark rye bread, and forest mushrooms and berries fill out the table. Šakotis, a spit-baked, spiky "tree cake," appears at celebrations.

Gira (kvass), a fermented bread drink, is popular in summer; midus (mead) and craft beer — Lithuania has a distinctive farmhouse brewing tradition in the north — are the drinks, along with strong coffee.

Vilnius has one of the largest and best-preserved Baroque old towns in Northern Europe, a UNESCO World Heritage Site — the Cathedral and its belfry, the Gates of Dawn, St Anne's Church, the university's courtyards, and the bohemian, self-declared "Republic of Užupis" across the river — with Gediminas' Tower on the hill and the sobering KGB Museum in the former secret-police headquarters.

Trakai, half an hour away, has the striking red-brick island castle on Lake Galvė and the Karaim community's prayer houses and kibinai. The Hill of Crosses near Šiauliai is an extraordinary mound covered with hundreds of thousands of crosses, bulldozed repeatedly by the Soviets and rebuilt each time. Kernavė, an early medieval hillfort site, is a quieter World Heritage listing.

Kaunas has a UNESCO-listed body of interwar modernist architecture and the Ninth Fort Holocaust memorial. On the coast, the Curonian Spit — a long, narrow sandbar of migrating dunes, pine forest, and fishing villages, shared with the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad — is another World Heritage Site, reached by ferry from Klaipėda, and Grūtas Park ("Stalin World") near Druskininkai gathers dismantled Soviet statues into an open-air collection.