Viršuliškės

This cross-street was the main street of the former village of Viršuliškių, with the surviving farmsteads alongside it. A few homesteads can still be found near the ‘Viršuliškių porelė’ towers (Viršilų g. 11 and 13 ).

The place name Viršuliškės has been mentioned in historical sources since the 16th century. The name of the place derives from the Viršilos family, as it is believed that this place belonged to this noble family in ancient times.

The village of Viršuliškės was incorporated into Vilnius in 1969.

The small cemetery of the former village is today surrounded by high-rise buildings and the Vilnius Western Bypass. The cemetery was used for burials from the 19th to the end of the 20th century, and gravestones, as well as metal, and wooden crosses with Polish inscriptions still remain.

Of the three cemeteries in Viršuliškės (the Sudervės Catholic and Jewish cemeteries are also found here), this is the oldest and smallest.

‘Grand Office is a modern 21-storey business centre that opened its doors in 2014.The building is one of the tallest office buildings in Vilnius at 81 metres. The architects are Gintaras Čaikauskas and Miroslavas Šejnickis. This duo of architects also designed two other skyscrapers in Viršuliškės, ‘Viršuliškių porelė’ (Viršilų g. 11 and 13). Together with other architects, G. Čeikauskas has also designed other well–known buildings in Vilnius, such as ‘Forum Palace’, and St. Joseph’s Church in Pilaitė.

The 10 m high sculpture of a steel giant holding a cloud, ‘Suomis’ (‘The Finn’), which stands next to the business centre, was created by the sculptor Tadas Gutauskas on the initiative of Finnish companies operating in Lithuania. It is no coincidence that its colours are the same as the Finnish flag – white and blue. According to the author, the sculpture symbolises the determination of a person to achieve the unattainable and to chase their dreams.

T. Gutauskas’ sculptures in Vilnius are numerous: ‘Twins’ (Verslo Trikampis, 2006), the sculpture for Lithuanian basketball outside Siemens Arena (2007), the ‘Tree of Unity’ in Vingis Park (2009), and ‘The Path of Freedom’ (at the roundabout of Konstitucijos pr., Geležinio Vilko g., and T. Narbuto g., 2010).

The construction of the ‘Press Palace’ building (architect Yurijus Koninas, engineer Alfonsas Kanapeckas) started in 1979 and continued until around 1986, although the first newspapers were printed in 1984.

The Press Building was one of the largest and most important buildings built in the capital during that five-year period (1980-1985). The cost of the Palace was 14 million roubles (in comparison, the cost of the TV tower was only about 8 million roubles). The editorial offices of all the newspapers and magazines belonging to the publishing house of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Lithuania, which had previously been scattered all over the city, moved into the building. The production building housed the publishing house’s printing house, the largest in Lithuania.

The building consists of an editorial wing and a production wing for printing newspapers. In addition, the complex includes a domestic building, warehouses, and a garage.

At around 61 metres high, it was one of the top three tallest buildings in Vilnius at the time.

Although the building is mass-produced and conformed to the standards of the time (modular or reinforced concrete construction), it can be called exceptional. Significant resources were allotted to the building’s architectural plans and distinctive design. No expense was spared in the interior either, with decorative elements made of oak and aluminium, materials that were considered to be luxurious at the time.

On 11 January 1991, the Soviet army forcibly seized the Press Building, where the country’s main daily newspapers were published. The only tool of resistance was a fire hose, which Vytautas Lukšys, having climbed on the canopy above the central entrance, pointed at the soldiers to use as a makeshift water cannon. Shots were fired and Lukšys was wounded in the cheek, but he recovered enough to get himself into the ambulance unaided. Bullet holes are still visible on the wall of the building above the main entrance.

In 1986, newspapers were the main medium of information, with 1,840 newspapers per 1,000 inhabitants.

Six ‘Rondoset’ offset presses from the East German ‘Plagman’ plant were transported from the GDR and installed in the new printing house.

The new presses halved printing times. One machine could print 70,000–72,000 copies of newspapers per hour (20 newspapers per second!). Six machines produced around 420-500 thousand copies per hour.

The printing house printed 23 titles a day, with a total circulation of 2 million, using 45 tonnes of paper a day. To achieve this, it worked around the clock in two shifts (the second shift was longer, as the daily newspapers had to be printed and delivered to post offices all over Lithuania by morning). The editorial offices of all newspapers had strict schedules for delivering layouts to the printing house to ensure that all newspapers were printed on time. Newspapers for the Kaliningrad region were also printed here. Their pages were obtained electronically by phototelegraph, which made the work much easier, as the newspaper plates had previously been transported by plane.

In 2011, as a monument to the nuclear physicist, dissident, human rights activist, academic Andrei Sakharov (1921–1989), a sculptural bench by Vladas Kančiauskas was unveiled in the square named after Sakharov. 

In 1948, Andrei Sakharov became involved in the Soviet atomic bomb project and later headed the hydrogen bomb development team. In 1967, after realising the threat to humanity posed by nuclear weapons, the atomic and hydrogen bomb developer became a prominent human rights defender and dissident who opposed the Soviet regime.

Sakharov supported Lithuania’s independence and often came to Lithuania.

In 1975, he received the Nobel Peace Prize. The European Parliament Prize, established in 1988 and named after Sakharov, is awarded annually to human rights defenders who fight to promote democracy and freedom.

The former Vilnius medium wave broadcasting station is located in a small forest in Viršuliškės, about 3 km north-west of the city centre. This site had already been selected in 1937, when Vilnius was still under Polish rule. It was the third station after Žvėrynas and Liepkalnis (Liepkalnis was located near Kirtimai Airport; however, as it expanded, the station’s antenna towers started to interfere with flights). In mid-1939, the station building and antennae (two metal masts, 130 m high, isolated from the ground to act as directional antennas) were completed. On 30 August that year, two days before the outbreak of the Second World War, broadcasting equipment was shipped from Warsaw to Vilnius; however, it never reached Vilnius. In July 1944, the Germans retreating from Vilnius demolished both of the station’s antennae masts. After the Soviet Union reoccupied Vilnius, it was decided to rebuild the Viršuliškės station. The new metal antenna mast, 120 m high, was insulated from the ground like the Polish masts and acted as a vertical beam. The radio station in Viršuliškės started broadcasting in 1945 and remained operational until 2012

The cobblestone path commemorates the old road to the village of Viršuliškės. The current Tujų Street coincides with the old road that led from the city centre or Žvėrynas through Saltoniškės to the village of Viršuliškės. The asphalted Tujų Street meets Č. Sugihara Street and comes to an end. On the other side of Č. Sugihara Street, an unpaved, unnamed path continues on the other side of the street, meandering towards Narbutas Street. It also shows traces of the old road to the village of Viršuliškės – a cobblestone path.

The architectural designs for the construction of Viršuliškės were prepared in 1973 by the chief architects Birutė Kasperavičienė and Juozas Zinkevičius. It is unique in that respect alone, because the surrounding residential areas – Karoliniškės, Justiniškės, Šeškinė, Pašilaičiai – were designed by Kazimieras Rimantas Balėnas and his wife Genovaitė. The construction of multi-storey blocks commenced in 1975. Building Viršuliškės was supposed to help solve the problem of flats for Vilnius residents. The district was designed as a single residential complex of large blocks of flats, which were joined together in arc-shaped groups without blocking but by connecting them with openwork panels.

The architects said that this way of connecting the buildings was intended to improve air circulation in the inner spaces of the block, as well as to let in more light. At the bottom of these open-work panels formed shelters from the wind.

The rows of vertical columns of holes have become symbolic of the houses in the district.

This sculpture by Vladimiras Kančiauskas was erected in 1990. Known locally simply as ‘Rooster’, it was restored in 2000 and placed on a new pedestal. This is another sculpture by V. Kančiauskas in Viršuliškės, in addition to the bench by A. Sakharov. In Karoliniškės, we can find another sculpture by V. Kančiauskas – ‘Vėjapūtis’ (‘The Windblower’).

This is the first church built in Lithuania after fifty years of Soviet occupation. In 1988, a parish was established, uniting four residential districts built during the Soviet era – Viršuliškės, Justiniškės, Pašilaičiai, and part of Šeškinė.

The church is dedicated in honour of Blessed Jurgis Matulaitis. The bishop was beatified in 1987, on the occasion of the 600th anniversary of the Baptism of Lithuania.

Lithuanian architects had the unconventional task of designing a church. After several rounds of competition, a joint group of architects was formed, led by architect Gediminas Baravykas (with Gintaras Aperavičius and Ričardas Krištapavičius). G. Baravykas has designed more famous buildings in Vilnius, such as the National Art Gallery and the Registry Office (The Palace of Marriage). 

The first to be built was a brick parish house. In 1991, the chapel was consecrated. In the same year, Bishop Juozas Tunaitis consecrated the cornerstone of the new church. Five years later, the first Holy Masses were celebrated in the Church of Blessed Jurgis Matulaitis. 

In the plans, next to the church (on the west side), there was supposed to be a tall bell tower with a semicircular chapel. The tower, as a vertical landmark, was designed to be visible from Laisvės Avenue and Ozo Street. Unfortunately, neither the tower nor the chapel was built. The architectural solution of the church is an interpretation of the traditional Gothic style (seven buttresses leading to the arch-butanes). The church was built with a particular emphasis on light, and ten large windows (alluding to The Ten Commandments) were placed in the south wall of the church.

This is the third cemetery and the only working Jewish cemetery in Vilnius. The history of the cemetery dates back to 1935, when the Jewish community was negotiating with the wealthy Vilnius landowners, the Pimonovs, to purchase a plot of land in the village of Dembówka. A total of 22 hectares were purchased, the cemetery was divided into quarters and surrounded by a concrete wall in order to give it a quadrangular shape.

After the Second World War, the city authorities gave part of the cemetery to the Catholics, and it wasn’t until 1997 that a partition was created, thereby separating the cemeteries of the two religions. In the same year, the architect Lev Kaplan designed a small two-storey building to the left of the entrance; this is used for performing the last rites before burial, as well as for the administration and information service to help locate a particular grave.

In 2003, the remains found in the territory of the first Jewish cemetery (Piromont) during the construction of the King Mindaugas Bridge and the reconstruction of Rinktinės and Olimpiečių Streets were reburied here.

In the cemetery, you can find monuments to members of the ghetto resistance organisation, the FPO (Itsik Vitenberg, Sonia Madeisker), prisoners of Vilnius ghetto, teachers who died in the ghetto, the tombstone of the Vilna Gaon (Elijo ben Solomon Zalman, 1720-1797, whose remains were reinterred from the Old Piromont cemetery), the remains of Zemach Shabad, as well as those of his son and wife (reburied from the Užupis cemetery). 

The grave of the Vilna Gaon is located in Cemetery Quarter IV, while Zemach Shabad’s resting place can be found in Cemetery Quarter V.