On a nature trail with a toddler

Anyone in Vilnius would be able to tell you where Belmontas is. But the name Leoniškės has been forgotten, even though it was well known in the times of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, almost five hundred years ago. 

Leoniškės manor and farmstead covered the area between the present Steponas Batoro Street and the River Vilnia. The first written mention of these areas is a land sale deed of 1533. Marina Krylovič, the widow of the landlord Leon Krylovič, sold the Leoniškės estate to the Vilnius City Magistrate. The name Leoniškės probably derives from the name of the owner of the manor. Three years later, the privilege of Sigismund the Elder was issued, confirming the boundaries of Leoniškės Manor and granting permission to build a mill on the Vilnia River for the needs of the town. Later on, there were not one but two mills, but their exact location is unknown. The Leoniškės farmstead, i.e. the farm buildings and the mills belonging to the manor, were usually rented by the chief magistrates (burgermeisters) and councillors of Vilnius. They not only had access to the mills but were also obliged to maintain the buildings and repair the roads. The 1795 inventory book records that the farmstead consisted of a tavern, dwelling house, granary, barn, and brewery. The new tenant of Leoniškės, Jonas Borutis, built a brickyard and a tile factory, but in the same year, the farmstead was damaged by Napoleon’s army. Before the First World War, Leoniškės Manor and the farmstead were still inhabited by about 100 people, and a horticultural school operated teaching gardening and orchard keeping. In the interwar period, it housed a colony of Vilnius City Municipality employees. 

After the Second World War, the decaying buildings of Leoniškės Manor completely deteriorated. Only the remains of the French Mill, the dam, and the bridge over the river Vilnia have survived; they were conserved and restored in 2000-2006.

Mills on the River Vilnia have been mentioned in historical sources since the 14th century. The first ones not only milled grain but also operated cannon foundries, paper mills, and blacksmiths’ forges turned by water wheels. The cradle of industry in Vilnius was being built along the bubbling Vilnia.

In front of you is the French Mill, so named because of Charles de Vim, a French citizen, who leased a part of Leoniškės Farm from the Vilnius City Council in 1836 with the intention of setting up a tavern and building a water mill. Although he did not get permission for the tavern, he did start building the mill. De Vim’s intention was to establish a powerful industrial mill here, and it is claimed that the equipment was even brought in from France. A concrete dam more than 5 m high with a bridge and wooden panels to regulate the water level were built on the river Vilnia. A 200 m inlet and outlet canals were dug; their slopes were reinforced with timber pilings. Cascades of pilings were also installed downstream of the mill to control the flow. A three-turbine compartment was built above the canal. A four-storey course and fine milling section was connected to it, with a two-storey grain-cleaning section on the other side. A tavern was also built, even though permission was not granted for this. Due to accumulated debts and unpaid taxes, the mill passed to other tenants, the brothers Elemelach and Meyer Kinkulkin. They ran the mill for almost 100 years, from 1845 to 1940. The mill continued to operate, even throughout WWII. In 1940 it was nationalised and supplied flour to most of the inhabitants of Vilnius, grinding up to 20 tonnes of grain a day, producing flour and groats. During the Soviet era, the building lost its function and was abandoned, and the water canal silted up.

After a decade of neglect, the mill was restored in 2001. Parts of the buildings and canals were rebuilt. One of the largest water wheels in Lithuania still turns in one of them. Seven bridges and old road routes have been restored, the surroundings have been landscaped, and a spectacular entertainment and recreation centre has been created within the reconstructed stone walls.

The remnants of the old dam of the former French Mill can be seen in a delightful bend of the meandering Vilnia, with a convenient pedestrian footbridge above the former road. It is said that at least one million visitors pass over it every year. 

The site is important for both heritage and environmental conservationists. The dam is part of the French Mill and is also an important salmon spawning site. Vilnius is the only capital city in the world where salmon spawn – in the river Nemunas, the Neris, and finally the Vilnia, coming from as far as the Baltic Sea. The fish weir next to the dam is vital for their survival. When the Belmont Dam collapsed in 2016, water began to seep through the hole and the fishway was depleted. Concerned environmentalists demanded that the dam be demolished, while heritage conservationists argued that this was impossible because the dam was part of the heritage. After much debate, it was decided to repair the Belmont dam. In 2017, the site was included in the Register of Cultural Heritage.

Popular with Vilnius residents and visitors alike, the 6-kilometre Pūčkoriai Nature Trail starts here. On the eastern side, you will see a steep hill. These slopes belong to the Tuputiškės Geomorphological Reserve, which protects a characteristic system of sloping gullies. The trail continues along the steep slope; at the bottom, the spring-fed Pūčkoriai Ponds can be found. The sounds of planes coming in to land and trains passing by can be heard from time to time, as the railway to Naujoji Vilnia is nearby. If you walk further along the trail, you will see the Pūčkoriai Mound, surrounded on three sides by the Vilnia Valley. The slopes of the hill are quite steep at 10-19 m high. At the top, there is an oval-shaped platform with the remains of a rampart and an ancient altar place. The Pūčkoriai mound was used for defence purposes from the first centuries AD and did not lose its importance until the 13th-14th centuries. Archaeologists have found flint artefacts which show that people lived in the area as early as the Stone Age. The sundial is also a symbol of the site. As you continue along the nature trail, you will come to a grove of oak trees planted in memory of one of the founders of the trail, the forester Vladas Leonavičius. 

Due to the stairs and steep slopes, you will not be able to reach the Pūčkoriai Mound and the Sundial with a pushchair, so from here take the asphalted road towards the Pūčkoriai Farmstead. 

Here you can see only one part of the Pūčkoriai Manor Farmstead – the restored Pūčkoriai Manor dwelling house and the nearby ponds. The manor of Pūčkoriai, or Puškarņa as it used to be called, was first mentioned at the end of the 14th century, but the complex of buildings dating from the 18th and 19th centuries has been preserved until today.

This manor belonged to the treasury of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania for about four centuries. Later, it passed to the State Counsellor Loškarev, who sold it to Jokūbas Sidorovič in 1804. After his death, the estate was inherited by his son Stanislov Sidorovič, a lawyer at Vilnius High Court. During his tenure, one of the most beautiful and largest water mills in Lithuania was built on the foundations of the former cannon foundry, with as many as twelve grinding stones in operation. In the first half of the 19th century, the manor and the surrounding lands belonged to the Izmailski family, who managed the estate until the Second World War. In 1940, the Soviet authorities nationalised the Izmailski’s property, and in 1949, the whole family was deported to Siberia. During the war, the manor buildings were damaged, and only the ruins of the former factory remained. During the Soviet era, the manor housed the office of a State farm, and later four families lived there. Liudmila Patapienė is a descendant of the Izmailski family; she recalls how her mother Irena had preserved the manor’s documents – it was only after Lithuania regained independence and after a drawn-out court hearing that it was proved that the manor had indeed belonged to their family. After the manor was returned to Liudmila Patapienė, the manor house was restored on her initiative (architect Algis Stulgys); the restoration was awarded a letter of honour for the restoration of wooden architecture. L. Patapienė now lives in her ancestral home. 

These ruins are where a cannon foundry stood; once the pride of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and what gave the place its name. The place name Pūčkoriai derives from the Slavic word puszkarnia. It is believed that a large arms factory was operating here over 400 years ago in the 16th century. Only part of the water channel and the remains of the stone walls remain. The Pūčkoriai Foundry was used to cast cannons of various sizes – formidable weapons at the time. Moreover, they were tested on site. Smoke, thunder, and heavy weapons attracted curious visitors. Even the best-armed Swedish army in Europe, and the Russian and French troops knew about the Pūčkoriai guns. In 1625, the Swedes seized cannons from Biržai as spoils of war.

From the mid-19th century, the cannon foundry was converted into a watermill, which was distinguished by its size and workmanship. It was one of the largest mills in Lithuania, generating a net profit of 3000 roubles per year in silver (for comparison, a railway construction worker earned 3 roubles per day, which was considered a rather good wage at the time). The new owner, S. Izmailski, adapted the mill for paper production. It produced cardboard, cellulose, and writing paper. During the First World War, the equipment was shipped to Germany, and during the Second World War the paper mill was abandoned, and it has remained so ever since. Several administrative and residential buildings, workshops, and a fence enclose the site.

Pūčkoriai is one of the most visited natural monuments in Lithuania. In 1859, the Polish publicist and historian Adam Honory Kirkor, impressed by the beauty of these places, wrote: “It is a huge hill, from which the town and the adjacent surroundings look beautiful, and the waters of the springs, flowing through pipes underneath, help to turn the huge mill in the troubled, noisy, but poor Vilnia, without any respite…”

This unique geological site was declared a natural monument in 1974. It is the highest outcrop of exposed layers in Lithuania, reaching 65 m (absolute height above sea level – 173 m). In comparison, the current Vilnius City Municipality skyscraper is only 14 m taller. The width of the outcrop is 260 m.  

The exposed rocks are neither old nor young at ‘only’ 18-22,000 years old. Explorers, who have been exploring the exposure since the early 20th century, find sediments with the remains of ancient animals from the Jurassic period – a time when dinosaurs roamed the earth. 

Snow and rain have severely eroded the upper part of the outcrop, with gullies of varying depth and width. The lower part of the exposure is covered with bushes and trees.

There are fosses and trenches near the Pūčkoriai exposure, and a reinforced concrete bunker in Stepono Batoro Street. It is said that these defensive installations were connected by a surviving underground tunnel.

The Vilnia, also known as the Vilnelė, is very dear to Vilnius residents. After all, it is the river that gives its name to our capital Vilnius.  

The 82-kilometre-long river starts at Vindžiūnai, near the Lithuanian-Belarusian border, and flows into the Neris River in the heart of Vilnius. The river flows calmly through marshy areas at first, before dropping 125 metres to resemble a mountain torrent just before it enters the River Neris. The river flows at Markučiai with a discharge of 2-3 m per second, and it meanders for 21 kilometres through Vilnius. In many places, it is quite shallow at only 0.4-0.7 metres deep, so it is relatively easy to wade across the river. 

Many Vilnius suburbs and further settlements with mills, workshops, and factories have been established along the Vilnia since ancient times: Sereikiškės, Užupis, Paplauja, Markučiai, Belmontas, Pūčkoriai, Kučuriškės, Rokantiškės, and Naujoji Vilnia. Workshops for city artisans, wool carding mills, watermills, and brickyards were established in the Vilnia Valley. There have been many dams, ponds, and canals here since ancient times. The ponds of Kučuriškės (Rokantiškės) and Belmontas (located in the Vilnia River Valley), the dam, and the canal of Belmontas Mill have been preserved to this day.