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Incentive Travel
Member of RCD Room Concept Design
Maironio st.13
LT-01124 Vilnius, Lithuania
Ph.(+370 620 67477)
Fax (+370 5 212 22 40)
E-mail: incentivetravel@rcd.lt

The Cathedral Square belfry is the most popular place to meet in Vilnius. Although only believers and tourists drop in inside the Cathedral, the square almost never gets empty.  The main old city streets “meet” in the Cathedral Square. It is here that you see the various kinds of Vilnius people – students, civil servants, bank clerks, punks, roller-skaters, and the homeless…
Perkūnas Temple and an eternal fire are believed to have been in the place of the Cathedral in pagan times.  The Cathedral and the belfry are a part of the building complex of the Lower Castle of Vilnius.  The buildings of the Castle that once stood in the Cathedral Square are marked with darker bricks.
Because of frequent fires, wars, and unstable ground under the foundations, Vilnius Cathedral was rebuilt many times. Reconstruction of the Cathedral was started in 1783 according to a project of Laurynas Stuoka-Gucevičius, and it was finished in 1801 by Mykolas Šulcas. It was rebuilt in a Classical style, but traces of Gothic, Renaissance, and Baroque are reflected in its brick walls. This is how the Cathedral remains to the present day.
St Helen’s, St Casimir’s, and St Stanislav’s sculptures were built on the façade by the sculptor Karolis Jelskis; the façade and the interior were decorated with sculptures and bas-reliefs (Italian sculptor Tommaso Righil).
The façade sculptures were removed and destroyed in 1950, and they were again rebuilt in 1993. There are 11 side chapels, a sacristy, and 2 side doors in the Cathedral. The main façade has a portico of six Doric columns.
The side façades are symmetrical; the chapels are joined by an enablement, while a colonnade and niches with sculptures divide the walls. The interior of the Cathedral is also very rich with more than forty 16th to 19th century artworks such as frescos, small and large paintings. When several chapels were built in the Cathedral, prominent, merited people of Lithuania and the Catholic Church were buried in it. So, eventually the Cathedral was converted into a peculiar mausoleum or pantheon.
Grand Duke Vytautas (1430), his wife Ona (1418), his brother Žygimantas Kęstutaitis (1440), Švitrigaila (1452), Elizabeth Habsburg (1545) and Barbora Radvilaitė (1551), the wives of Žygimantas Augustas, Jonas Žygimantaitis (1583), bishop Valerijonas Protasevičius (1580) are buried here, and St Casimir’s relics are kept in the Cathedral.
In the basement there is a museum dedicated to the history of the building from the days of the pagan Temple to the present day. During the Cathedral’s reconstruction, the original floor laid in the times of Mindaugas was found. Moreover, archaeologists discovered the remains of the 1387 Cathedral, the altars of the pagan Temple and other items of archaeological interest.