The Castle

Feeling a little more spunky and rested, Kevin and I decided to explore the castle a little more.

I think at one time there was a moat surrounding three sides of the castle (the fourth side was the Neris River). However, the windows at the bottom of the tower present a problem to this theory. They were in the process of building a bridge to span the moat, but despite the fact that it looked perfectly fine to walk on, there were barricades blocking people from using it. So we got to experience the fun of walking up and down the two steep sides. My knee behaved itself for the most part, so it wasn't as bad as I had anticipated. As you can see, the stairs seemed to be part of the hillside.

The castle itself is in various stages of rebuilding. The day that we were there, a backhoe and some other heavy machinery was in the process of extending the moat to the river. As you look at pictures of the castle, you can see that the stone and brick doesn't match. According to Kevin, this is because the people were desperate during WWII for building supplies, so they started to disassemble the castle for the bricks. When you are at that desperate of circumstances, survival trumps preservation of historical landmarks. Plus, the castle had seen previous warfare, so parts of it had fallen prior to WWII.

We were able to walk up one side of the fortification wall and get a bird's eye view of the castle and the surrounding area. I can just imagine how cool the castle was prior to its destruction. Hopefully Kaunas has the means to finish its restoration of the castle because it is a neat part of history.