The Cultural Routes Training Seminar in Vilnius

ASCE president, Mrs Lidija Pliberšek, will be a guest speaker at the Cultural Routes Training Seminar in Vilnius, Lithuania, taking place on 19 and 20 June, 2024.

The Department of Cultural Heritage under the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Lithuania, in cooperation with the Enlarged Partial Agreement on Cultural Routes of the Council of Europe (EPA) and the European Institute of Cultural Routes is organising a Cultural Routes Training Seminar for National Stakeholders.

The event will take place on 19 and 20 June, 2024, in Vilnius, Lithuania.

ASCE president, Mrs Lidija Pliberšek, will attend the event as one of the distinguished guest speakers. She will present the European Cemeteries Route as an example of Cultural Routes good practice.

The program will cover following topics:

• Context: the Cultural Routes of the Council of Europe programme
• Workshop: Presentation of Cultural Routes of the Council of Europe in Lithuania
• Defining a Cultural Route
• Tools for the governance of cultural routes
• Cultural routes – sustainable tourism, local development, and social participation
• Cultural Routes in practice
• Cultural routes communication and branding
• Roadmap for “Cultural Routes of the Council of Europe” in Lithuania

You can find the preliminary program of the seminar HERE.

Rasos Cemetery (Vilnius, Lithuania)

Rasos Cemetery is the oldest and most famous cemetery in the city of Vilnius, Lithuania. It is named after the Rasos district where it is located.

About the cemetery

The year 1769 is cited in many sources as the date when the Rasos Cemetery was founded. However, some historians believe it is a typo and the real date should be 1796. On April 24, 1801 the new cemetery was consecrated and two days later Jan Müller, the mayor of Vilnius, became the first person to be buried there. A formal document was signed in July 1801. It specified that the cemetery received 3.51 ha of land and that the cemetery will be free of charge to all city residents. It was the first cemetery in Vilnius not located next to a church.

In 1802-1807 two columbariums were built. They reached up to five stories in height and were joined at a right angle. At the end of the 19th century the columbariums began deteriorating. In between the columbariums, a neo-gothic red brick chapel was built in 1844–50. In 1888 a matching belltower was added to the chapel. At first the cemetery was surrounded by a wooden fence, but it burned down in 1812. A brick fence was rebuilt in 1820 and portions of it survive to this day.

In 1814 the cemetery was expanded as authorities bought additional land from a city resident. The addition is now known as the Hill of the Literaries. In 1847, members of the Eastern Orthodox church opened their own cemetery next to Rasos. It was used to bury soldiers from a nearby monastery hospital and poor city residents. Therefore, it became known as the Cemetery of Orphans.

After World War II, the Soviet authorities demolished the right columbarium and in the 1970s razed the left columbarium. The whole necropolis was to be destroyed in the 1980s as the Soviet authorities planned a major motorway to be built directly through the cemetery. Fortunately, the destruction was halted and after Lithuanian independence in 1990 and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Lithuanian and Polish authorities collaborated in a restoration of the cemetery.

*Text and photo source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rasos_Cemetery

Contacts

Rasos Cemetery
Rasų g. 32,
Vilnius 11351,
Lithuania

Phone: +370 5 265 6563t

Antakalnis Cemetery (Vilnius, Lithuania)

Antakalnis Cemetery, also known as Antakalnis Military Cemetery, was established in 1809 in the eastern part of Antakalnis (district of Vilnius, Lithuania), in a hilly pine forest.

About the cemetery

Established at the beginning of the 19th century, the Antakalnis Cemetery, also known as Antakalnis Military Cemetery, originally consisted of four separate cemeteries. These were different areas intended for different groups of deceased such as secular people, soldiers, orphans and participants of the First World War. Later, a single cemetery was formed.

Today, numerous soldiers of the World War I and the World War II are buried in this cemetery, as well as many political figures, artists, writers, scientists and the victims of the Soviet terror in 1991-1992.

Famous people in the cemetery

Some of the famous people buried in the Antakalnis Cemetery include:

• Marian Zdziechowski (1861-1938) - Polish philosopher and historian
• Teodor Bujnicki (1907-1944) - Polish poet
• Ieva Simonaitytė (1897-1978) - Lithuanian writer
• Antanas Venclova (1906-1979) - Lithuanian and Soviet politician
• Jurga Ivanauskaitė (1961-2007) - Lithuanian writer
• Janina Miščiukaitė-Brazaitienė (1949-2008) - singer
• Vytautas Kernagis (1951-2008) - singer and songwriter
• Algirdas Brazauskas (1932-2010) - politic, first president of independent Lithuania, elected in 1993.

Address

Karių kapų g. 11,
Vilnius 10313,
Lithuania

Contacts

+370 5 234 0587

*Photo by Loraine - Mano darbas, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7883692