Klaipėda District Municipality
Lithuania Minor
memorial museum of a Lietuvininkai writer
Vingio g. 11, Priekulė, Klaipėda District
55.56380, 21.32200
45 minutes-1 hour; longer with the park and town walk
during opening hours; summer is best with Priekulė's parks
I. Simonaitytė Memorial Museum, Ieva Simonaitytė house in Priekulė
A museum for the most important writer of Lithuania Minor
Priekulė Ieva Simonaitytė Memorial Museum is dedicated to the writer whom Visuotinė lietuvių enciklopedija calls the most important Lithuanian prose author depicting life in Lithuania Minor. It is a place where literature returns to a specific region, house, and community.
The museum is in Priekulė, on Vingio Street, in the writer's summer house. Its main value is not a large display, but an authentic setting and a personal story about a person whose work recorded the fate of the Lietuvininkai.
Who was Ieva Simonaitytė
Ieva Simonaitytė (1897-1978) was born in Vanagai, Priekulė volost, Klaipėda County. After suffering from bone tuberculosis in childhood she did not attend school and educated herself, worked as a seamstress, took part in Klaipėda Region Lithuanian cultural activity, and resisted Germanization.
Her best-known novel, 'Aukštujų Šimonių likimas' (1935), depicts the fate of people in Lithuania Minor. In 1936 she received the first Lithuanian State Literature Prize for it, becoming the first laureate of that prize. She later wrote the novel 'Vilius Karalius', for which she received the LSSR State Prize in 1958, as well as novellas and an autobiographical trilogy. After Germany seized the Klaipėda Region in 1939, she lived in Kaunas and later Vilnius, while spending summers in Priekulė.
The museum exhibition and home environment
The summer house preserves the authentic atmosphere of the late twentieth century: furniture, paintings, souvenirs, and gifts. In the study, the writer's personal home library is kept, alongside photographs, documents, first editions of all I. Simonaitytė's books, and personal belongings.
This memorial character lets visitors sense the writer's everyday life and working environment. Pay attention to the books, manuscripts, and details that speak about the creative process.
Museum history
The memorial museum was founded in 1979, soon after the writer's death, in the setting of her summer house, built in 1961. The permanent exhibition opened to visitors on 6 July 1984. Since 2009 it has been a branch of the Gargždai Area Museum.
In 2018-2019 the building underwent major repairs costing more than 139 thousand Eur, funded by EU money, and the renewed museum reopened on 8 November 2019. Because the summer house is listed in the Cultural Heritage Register, its authentic doors, windows, veranda, and wooden stairs were preserved. The museum presents not only the writer's legacy but also the wider cultural memory of Lithuania Minor.
Priekulė around the museum
Priekulė is an old town of the Klaipėda Region that has preserved a distinctive sixteenth- to nineteenth-century plan structure. Besides the museum, it is worth seeing the manor homestead with its park, the railway station building complex from 1875, the Evangelical Lutheran church, and the monument to I. Simonaitytė, 'Šventvakarių Ėvė' (1997, sculptor D. O. Matulaitė).
This setting helps the museum feel not like an isolated object, but like part of a living Lithuania Minor town where the writer spent much time.
How to visit
Allow 45 minutes to 1 hour for the museum, and more if you also walk through Priekulė's parks and town centre. Check opening hours through Gargždai Area Museum before travelling.
The museum combines well with other Klaipėda District and Lithuania Minor sites, including Agluonėnai Ethnographic Homestead, J. Gižas Homestead, and Klaipėda Region museums.
