Vilnius, Vilnius City Municipality
Vilnius
memorial to victims of Soviet terror and former manor territory
Žirmūnų g. 1F ir 1N, Vilnius
54.69791, 25.30265
1.5-2.5 hours
during opening hours, when exhibitions, the chapel-columbarium, and the park can be visited
A manor territory that became a memorial
Tuskulėnai Peace Park is in Vilnius' Žirmūnai district, in the territory of the former Tuskulėnai manor estate. The place has deep history: in the sixteenth century there was a royal manor here; in the seventeenth century the Pieglowskis dug ponds; and in the late eighteenth century the Canons Regular of the Lateran took over the property and named it Tuskulėnai. Around 1825, the present Classical palace was built to a design by architect Karol Podczaszyński, commissioned by Vilnius Governor-General Alexander Rimsky-Korsakov.
It is precisely this collision of layers that makes Tuskulėnai a difficult but necessary place to visit. It is not enough to see the park or the palace; visitors need to understand why a chapel-columbarium appeared in a quiet manor territory and why the landscape hides the history of mid-twentieth-century violence.
A secret burial site from 1944-1947
The official memorial victims page links Tuskulėnai with people killed in 1944-1947 in the Vilnius NKGB-MGB internal prison, whose remains were secretly buried in the manor territory. In total, 767 death sentences were carried out, and another 7 people died in prison before execution.
The mass burial site was discovered in 1994. During exhumations in 1994-1995, 706 remains were found, and another 18 were found in 2003 while the chapel-columbarium was being built: 45 burial pits and 724 remains in total. The numbers matter here not as statistics but as testimony to scale and systematic violence. By 2015, 66 victims had been identified, among them Bishop Vincentas Borisevičius.
The chapel-columbarium
One of the memorial's most important objects is the mound-shaped chapel-columbarium, where the remains found at Tuskulėnai are kept and honoured. It was designed by architects Vytautas Edmundas Čekanauskas and Algirdas Umbrasas, and its vault is decorated with Gitenis Umbrasas' mosaic Trinity.
The memorial complex began to take shape in the early twenty-first century: the Tuskulėnai Peace Park complex was established by a Government resolution on June 19, 2002; the chapel-columbarium was built in 2002-2004; and the victims' remains, in 717 urn-coffins, were reburied during Vėlinės in 2004.
Exhibitions and manor buildings
Tuskulėnai has two exhibitions: Projektas - HOMO SOVIETICUS, Project - HOMO SOVIETICUS, in the manor palace at Žirmūnų g. 1F, and Tuskulėnų dvaro paslaptys, Secrets of Tuskulėnai Manor, in the basement of the White Manor House at Žirmūnų g. 1N. The White Manor House is the 1928 villa of engineer Franciszek Walicki; beside it stands the small St Teresa chapel he built in 1930-1931.
The manor palace, office building, White Manor House, park, and memorial objects form one visiting route. The memorial is administered by the Genocide and Resistance Research Centre of Lithuania. It is not only a museum under a roof; part of the content has to be experienced by walking through the territory.
Opening hours and tickets
During research, the official visitor page listed exhibition opening hours as Wednesday-Saturday 10:00-18:00, Sunday 10:00-17:00, and closed Monday and Tuesday. The chapel-columbarium may have separate visiting rules, so official information should be checked. There are free-entry remembrance days, including September 28, Tuskulėnai Victims Memorial Day.
During research, tickets were listed as follows: adult 6 Eur, reduced 3 Eur, family tickets 9 Eur and 15 Eur, combined ticket 10 Eur or reduced 5 Eur. Tickets are usually sold until at least 30 minutes before closing, but current conditions should be checked before travelling.
