Vilnius University - Kaunas - Lituania

Kaunas is the second-largest city in Lithuania after Vilnius and an important centre of Lithuanian economic, academic, and cultural life. Kaunas is located in the central part of Lithuania on the confluence of the two largest Lithuanian rivers the Nemunas and the Neris. Kaunas is located 100 kilometres from the capital Vilnius and 212 kilometres from the Country’s major seaport Klaipeda. Known for being the temporary capital city of the independent Republic of Lithuania during the interwar perio

d, Kaunas sought to become a modern European city. Lithuanian architects started to design and build houses in the style of modernism which was avant-garde in Europe at that time. Today, this legacy remains, and design and architecture are still the main driving sectors of the city’s creative economy. As the architecture of buildings and streets retains the city’s cultural identity while emphasizing collective memory, the municipality has dedicated a large area of the old town to cultural and creative events. Modern Kaunas is an important industrial centre, producing metal castings, machine tools, radios, furniture, and wool, silk, and rayon textiles. Road, rail, and water transportation lines converge there. Power is supplied by a hydroelectric station on the Neman. Kaunas is also a major educational and cultural centre, with polytechnic, medical, agricultural, veterinary, and physical-culture institutes, as well as theatres and museums. Kaunas has a humid continental climate with an average annual temperature of approximately 7 °C. Despite its northern location, the climate in Kaunas is relatively mild. Summers in Kaunas are warm and pleasant with average daytime high temperatures of 21–22 °C . Winters are relatively cold, and sometimes snowy. One of Lithuania's oldest and grandest galleries, Kaunas' leading art museum is the place to acquaint yourself with the dreamlike paintings of Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis, one of the country's greatest artists and composers. Elsewhere in the sizeable gallery are contemporary sculpture exhibitions, Lithuanian folk and religious art, 16th- to 20th-century European works and Lithuanian landscapes and portraits from the 1900s to 1940s.