Niūronys, Anykščiai District Municipality
Anykščiai District
ethnographic museum about the horse and rural culture
Niūronys village, Anykščiai District, LT-29175
55.57331, 25.08683
1.5-3 hours
summer, education-programme season, or the Bėk, bėk, žirgeli! festival
Horse Museum in Niūronys
The Horse Museum is in Niūronys, near Anykščiai. VLE describes it as an ethnographic museum and, since 1992, the Ethnic Culture Department of the A. Baranauskas and A. Vienuolis-Žukauskas Memorial Museum.
This is not only an exhibition about an animal. The museum tells the story of the horse in work, movement, rural farming, crafts, festivals, and everyday life, where the horse was an inseparable helper. Niūronys is also interesting because writer Jonas Biliūnas was born here in 1879, and his birth homestead museum operates nearby.
Professor Petras Vasinauskas' initiative
The Horse Museum was founded in 1978 on the initiative of agronomist Professor Petras Vasinauskas. VLE states that the decision to establish the museum was made on 18 August 1978. Vasinauskas (1906-1995) was a prominent agricultural scientist and corresponding member of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences, who encouraged hilly, less fertile lands to be adapted for recreation and learning.
His connection with the horse theme was personal: in 1975 the professor organized a horse journey around Lithuania and later wrote about it. Because of this beginning, the museum has been linked from the start not only with exhibits, but with the living idea of horse culture.
What the museum preserves
VLE states that the museum collects, preserves, and displays horse-drawn agricultural implements: harrows, ploughs, rollers, mowing machines, seeders, and equipment for threshing, flax breaking, and milling. About 4,000 exhibits are preserved, most from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Transport is an important part of the exhibition: carts, sleighs, harnesses, and town and village means of travel. The museum also preserves tools used by blacksmiths, wheelwrights, saddlers, and weavers, so the visitor sees not only the horse, but the whole craft system around it.
Exhibitions, forge, and living homesteads
The museum has exhibitions on horse history, horse-drawn implements, Aukštaitija homesteads, village and town transport, and wheelwrighting, as well as an operating forge and a horse-powered mill, called a maniežas. Separate spaces cover the horse in warfare and works by woodcarvers Jurgis Kazlauskas and Jonas Tvardauskas.
Aukštaitija homesteads and live horses make the museum easier for families to understand. Education programmes with Žemaitukai and other horses, carriage rides, craft demonstrations in the forge and wheelwright workshop mean the exhibits are not only static objects.
Žirgo takas and the Bėk, bėk, žirgeli! festival
The 12 km Žirgo takas, created in 1988 for recreational carriage journeys, begins by the museum. This trail shows that the museum's theme continues outside the exhibition: horse culture is experienced through movement.
Since 1978, the cultural and sporting festival "Bėk, bėk, žirgeli!" has been held each year on the first Saturday of June at the Niūronys hippodrome. Breeders of Žemaitukai horses and horse enthusiasts come to the event, making it the best time to see a living tradition rather than exhibits alone.
Opening hours and tickets
At the time of research, the official visiting page listed summer-season hours for June-August: Monday-Friday 9:00-18:00, Saturday 10:00-19:00, and Sunday 10:00-18:00. It also stated that tickets are not sold during the final hour before closing.
At the time of research, tickets for May-October were listed as 7 EUR for adults, 5 EUR for pupils, students, and pensioners, and 19 EUR for a family ticket. Because museum hours, education programmes, and carriage-ride prices change seasonally, check the official page before travelling.
