Discover Klaipėda

A taste of Klaipėda

Klaipėda is Lithuania's only seaport and the country's third city — a brisk, salt-aired Baltic town with a distinctive German-Prussian past (it was Memel until 1923, an East Prussian outpost dating to the Teutonic Order's founding of Memelburg in 1252) that gives the half-timbered Old Town a charm quite different from anywhere else in Lithuania. The compact Old Town between the Dane river and the harbour is the obvious place to start: Theatre Square, the row of Fachwerkhäuser merchant houses on Didžioji Vandens, the unexpectedly fun Sculpture Park (a former cemetery converted into open-air sculpture), and the Annikė (the little Annie) statue commemorating a Goethe-era love poem. The brilliant Sea Museum on the southern tip of the Curonian Spit (reached by short ferry across the lagoon to Smiltynė) holds aquaria, a maritime history collection in a 19th-century fort, and a dolphin show. Don't miss the dramatic former KGB headquarters, now a moving museum of Soviet occupation; the working Klaipėda Castle Museum in the old harbour fort; the historic Smiltynė ethnographic open-air fishing village; and the white-sand Baltic beaches on the spit just beyond. Klaipėda is also the main ferry hub for the Curonian Spit and the Lithuanian coast resort of Nida — essential summer detours.