- Place
- Klaipėda City Municipality
- Region
- Klaipėda
- Type
- Romualdas Kvintas's 2014 bronze figure of a girl at Klaipėda's North Horn
- Address
- 1 Danės Street, North Horn, Klaipėda
- Coordinates
- 55.70622, 21.12300
- Visit duration
- 10-20 minutes; 45-90 minutes with the Old Ferry, Cruise Ship Terminal, or Danė waterfront
- Best time
- daylight, when the bronze surface is clear; until 30 December 2026, only after checking access through the North Horn work zone
Kiss, The Bronze Girl at North Horn, Welcome sculpture
How to identify Klaipėda's Kiss
The object covered here is the small bronze figure of a girl at North Horn, beside the Old Smiltynė Ferry at 1 Danės Street. She stands on the tips of her bare toes, tilts her head back, and purses her lips for a kiss; her arms reach down and out, while a long dress forms a smooth bell-shaped silhouette. The dark bronze figure is fixed to a round plate on a pale grey cylindrical plinth shaped like a mooring bollard.
The object and project sources reviewed do not publish exact figures for the sculpture's height, width, or weight, so none are estimated here. VLE lists other works by Romualdas Kvintas with the same Lithuanian title, including a 2003 small-form piece and a 2004 sculpture in a Vilnius hotel. The Klaipėda object is distinguished by its 2014 date, North Horn setting, and 1 Danės Street place card.
A gift to Klaipėda and the site chosen in 2014
Romualdas Kvintas created the sculpture, and Klaipėda Container Terminal commissioned it as a gift to the city for the company's twentieth anniversary. The regional library guide gives the exact unveiling date as 7 June 2014.
On 24 April 2014, the Klaipėda expert council of the Lithuanian Architects' Association approved the site closer to the waterfront presented by the PILIS design practice. The council considered two plinth options, a mooring bollard and a stone, and left the final decision to the sculptor. The built cylindrical bollard-like plinth reinforces the harbour connection and raises the small figure towards the eye line of passers-by.
A kiss across the Danė and the artist's original idea
In the stories told by Klaipėda's library and tourism centre, the girl's gaze and kiss are directed towards the boy with a puppy on the far side of the Danė at the Cruise Ship Terminal. That work is Childhood Dream, a figure waving to arriving and departing ships. Together they have become an easily read story about two riverbanks and waiting in a port city.
This is a later local interpretation rather than the only documented starting point for the artist. In 2014, Kvintas described the girl as a young Klaipėda resident welcoming people home and greeting visitors, called the work Kiss or Welcome, and said he had not coordinated a link with the sculptor of the boy. The romance across the river therefore works as a city story, but not as an undisputed condition of the original commission.
Bronze, intimate scale, and the city's living response
The figure is cast in bronze. The smooth, stylised human forms associated with Kvintas appear here in the short hair, rounded face, closed eyes, lifted chin, long dress, and bare feet held very close together. The dark surface carries brown and green tones of patina, while frequently touched areas may shine more brightly.
Klaipėda residents sometimes dress the girl with necklaces, bracelets, or seasonal clothing. These are community gestures, not permanent parts of the original composition. A 15min report of 16 May 2024, citing the communications manager of the company that donated the sculpture, said an arm that had fallen away because of corrosion had already been reattached. The episode is a useful reminder not to lean on the figure, climb it, or pull at anything placed around it.
Visiting during the 2026 North Horn works
On 15 July 2026, Google Maps marked the place as open 24 hours, and the outdoor sculpture itself has no ticket gate or admission charge. A more important practical exception applied on the same date: reconstruction had closed the section of Danė Street from Pilies Street to North Horn to pedestrians and vehicles until 30 December 2026. Ferry users are being redirected through the Memelio miestas complex, so check the latest municipal notice and work-zone barriers before making a special trip to the sculpture. Direct access can be restricted even while the digital card still says 24 hours.
In ordinary conditions, the surface immediately around the figure is firm and level, but that is not an accessibility audit of the whole route, especially during construction. Pedestrian and bicycle flows meet near the ferry, and parts of the water's edge do not have a continuous barrier. Keep children close, watch for slippery paving in rain or cold and for strong harbour winds, stay outside work zones, and do not obstruct ferry passengers.
