CULTURAL HERITAGE CENTER

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About

Located in the heart of Vilnius Old Town, the building is distinguished by its mannered splendour and abundance of details. Despite its imposing nature, the building seeks to adapt to its historic surroundings, using the structure, proportions and interpretations of historic architectural elements typical of the Old Town.

The building was constructed in 1987–1990, the time when postmodernism emerges as an opposition to functionalism, aesthetic levelling and mass construction of typical rectangular houses. The building of the Cultural Heritage Centre has become one of the most striking examples of the period’s quest for individuality, with its ornate elements underlining the ideological struggle against the asceticism of Soviet modernist architecture.

The project, framed by Ašmenos and Mėsinių Streets, is triangular in plan, and the development of the site was determined by the discovery of two Gothic cellars from the second half of the fifteenth century to the first half of the sixteenth century, which were once the main inspiration for the architects of the new building.

Inside the building, there are staircases and open arched galleries that mimic the closed courtyards typical of the Old Town, and the interior is decorated with works of art, such as a sculpture by M. Šimelis, suspended under a pyramid-shaped skylight. The Cultural Heritage Centre offers pathways to small corridors, office rooms, towers, views of the Old Town and other surprises in this postmodern maze.