page_title: Kaunas
section_title: Museums
hierarchical_section_title: Kaunas / Culture / Museums
caption_attribution_description: ANBO 1, Lithuania Aviation Museum, Kaunas, 12 Sept. 2008
context_page_description: Kaunas is the second-largest city in Lithuania after Vilnius and an important centre of Lithuanian economic, academic, and cultural life. Kaunas was the biggest city and the centre of a county in the Duchy of Trakai of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and Trakai Palatinate since 1413. In the Russian Empire, it was the capital of the Kaunas Governorate from 1843 to 1915.
  During the interwar period, it served as the temporary capital of Lithuania, when Vilnius was seized by Poland between 1920 and 1939. During that period Kaunas was celebrated for its rich cultural and academic life, fashion, construction of countless Art Deco and Lithuanian National Romanticism architectural-style buildings as well as popular furniture, the interior design of the time, and a widespread café culture. The city interwar architecture is regarded as among the finest examples of European Art Deco and has received the European Heritage Label. It contributed to Kaunas being named as the first city in Central and Eastern Europe to be designated as a UNESCO City of Design. Kaunas has been selected as the European Capital of Culture for 2022, together with Esch-sur-Alzette, Luxembourg.
context_section_description: Kaunas is often called a city of museums, because of the abundance and variety of them. The museums in Kaunas include:
  the War Museum of Vytautas the Great
  the M. K. Čiurlionis National Art Museum, commemorating the work of the early 20th century avant-garde artist M. K. Čiurlionis who sought to combine painting and music into a single artistic medium
  the Žmuidzinavičius Museum (best known as the Devils' Museum), which houses a collection of more than two thousand sculptures and carvings of devils from all over the world, most of them of folk provenance. Of particular interest are the Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin devils, together doing the dance of death over a playground littered with human bones
  Lithuanian Aviation Museum
  Museum of the History of Lithuanian Medicine and Pharmacy
  Historical Presidential Palace, displaying exhibits from the interwar period
  Kaunas Museum for the Blind
  Maironis Lithuanian Literature Museum
  Kaunas Picture Gallery
  Mykolas Žilinskas Art Gallery
  Povilas Stulga Museum of Lithuanian Folk Instruments
  Tadas Ivanauskas Zoological Museum
  Sugihara house-museum
  The so-called ab underground printing house was a part of the nonviolent resistance press during the Soviet times. Now it is the branch of Kaunas War Museum, located 8 km (5 mi) north of Kaunas in a small Saliu village, near the town of Domeikava. Although the AB printing house worked regularly, it was never detected by KGB. It was included into the Registry of Immovable Cultural Heritage Sites of Lithuania in 1999.
  The apartments of some famous Kaunas natives, including Paulius Galaunė, Adam Mickiewicz, Juozas Grušas, Balys Sruoga, Juozas Tumas-Vaižgantas, Salomėja Nėris, Juozas Zikaras, Vincentas Sladkevičius have been turned into public museums.
caption: Lituanica's replica and ANBO I in the Lithuanian Aviation Museum
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