Vilnius Landmarks Worth Touring
St Anne’s Church in Vilnius is built from 33 distinct shapes of red clay brick, all cut and fired without a single stone block, and Napoleon is said to have wanted to carry it home to Paris. That is the kind of specific detail that separates a real Vilnius landmark tour from a generic “old churches” itinerary.
Gediminas’ Tower and Castle Hill
The red-brick octagonal tower atop Castle Hill is the 14th-century core of the old Vilnius Castle complex, and inside it holds medieval armor, cannons, and scale models tracing the city’s growth, with an observation deck at the top giving a full circle of the terracotta roofs below. The National Museum of Lithuania runs the tower and its exhibits , and Viator sells a timed entrance ticket if you’d rather skip any line at the door.
Vilnius Cathedral and its bell tower
The Neoclassical basilica dedicated to St. Stanislaus and St. Ladislaus holds the Baroque Chapel of St. Casimir and stands beside a freestanding 57-meter bell tower that was once part of the city’s defensive walls. Out front, the Stebuklas (“miracle”) tile set into the cobblestones marks the Vilnius end of the 1989 Baltic Way, the human chain that ran all the way back to Tallinn.
St. Anne’s Church and the Bernardine complex
Built from those 33 brick shapes into Flamboyant Gothic pinnacles, St. Anne’s sits beside the older Gothic-Renaissance Church of St. Francis and St. Bernard, and Go Vilnius covers the complex’s history in more depth . Nothing else in the city matches the brickwork’s fine detail up close.
Church of St. Peter and St. Paul
Out in Antakalnis, this late-17th-century Baroque church, commissioned in 1668 by Grand Hetman Mykolas Kazimieras Pacas, holds more than 2,000 hand-sculpted white stucco figures across its walls and ceiling, plus a chandelier shaped like a glass boat. It sits further from the Old Town than the other stops here, so plan a short trolleybus or taxi ride rather than folding it into a walking loop. If you’d rather have someone else sequence all five stops in one outing, Viator lists guided Vilnius Old Town tours that typically cover the tower, the cathedral, and St. Anne’s together.
The Gate of Dawn
The surviving southern gate of the 16th-century city wall houses the revered icon of the Blessed Virgin Mary Mother of Mercy, gilded in gold and silver votive offerings and venerated across Lithuania, Poland, and Belarus alike. It sits directly on a public street, so you can view it from below or step into the small chapel above for a closer look.
The Museum of Occupations and Freedom Fights
Housed in the former Gestapo and KGB headquarters on Lukiškės Square, this museum preserves the basement isolation cells and interrogation rooms, alongside archives documenting the deportation of over 300,000 Lithuanians to Siberian labor camps and the armed resistance of the Forest Brothers. Treat it with the gravity the subject demands; OLKM’s own site has current hours, and it is not a stop to rush between two lighter attractions.
The verdict
Gediminas’ Tower and St. Anne’s reward anyone with half a day in the Old Town; the Museum of Occupations deserves its own unhurried two to three hours rather than a squeeze between churches, and St. Peter and St. Paul’s is worth the short trip out if Baroque interiors are the reason you came.
Before you go
Wear real walking shoes: Castle Hill’s path and the Old Town’s cobblestones punish sandals fast. For a plan that sequences all of this by day, see the 2-day Vilnius itinerary or the full Vilnius guide .