Modernist Kaunas: Architecture of Optimism, 1919-1939

When Vilnius was lost to Poland after the First World War, Kaunas improvised: as Lithuania's provisional capital from 1919 to 1939 it built itself into a modern city almost overnight. Ministries, museums, banks, schools and villas in confident modernist styles rose across the New Town and the garden suburb of Žaliakalnis, a community-driven burst of optimism in concrete. UNESCO inscribed Modernist Kaunas in 2023 as an outstanding record of interwar city-making.