Three days in Klaipėda: half timbered Prussia on one bank, and a wandering sand dune on the other

Two nights at the mouth of the lagoon: a Teutonic castle reduced to a single bastion, a grid of German merchant streets laid out after a great fire, a bronze ghost climbing out of the water, and a ninety nine kilometre spit of sand five minutes away by ferry.

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Length
3 days, 2 nights
Where you stay
Klaipėda
Places
7 across 3 days
OpenFreeMap © OpenMapTiles Data from OpenStreetMap

Klaipėda has been Lithuanian since 1923 and German for six and a half centuries before that. The Teutonic Knights built the castle in 1253, the town that grew round it was called Memel after the river to the south, and it stayed Prussian and then German through everything until the First World War left it as a Free City under Allied administration. Lithuania annexed it in 1923 with a small and deliberately deniable force of volunteers, Germany took it back in 1939, and it has been Lithuanian again since 1945, with almost none of the German population left.

The town shows it. This is not a pretty Baroque old town like Vilnius: it is a grid of low half timbered and yellow brick merchant houses laid out after a fire destroyed the place in 1854, a working port with cranes visible from the middle of it, and a city that draws mostly Lithuanian visitors. That is part of the appeal. Prices are local and so is the atmosphere.

The reason most people come is on the other side of the water. The Curonian Spit runs ninety nine kilometres south from the harbour mouth, a peninsula of pine forest and enormous shifting sand dunes with a freshwater lagoon on one side and the Baltic on the other, half of it Lithuanian and half of it in Russian Kaliningrad. It is on the World Heritage list, the crossing takes five minutes, and it is the best thing on this coast.

Highlights

  • A moated Teutonic castle of 1253 reduced by four centuries of siege to a single bastion and a museum
  • A cobbled square of German merchant houses, and a street plan drawn after the town burned in 1854
  • A bronze wraith hauling itself up the quay wall with a lantern, after a sentry's story from 1595
  • Eighty odd wooden folklore figures carved into a wooded dune above the lagoon
  • Sixty metre grey dunes held in place by lichen, with the sand still blowing off the top of them

Where to stay

Klaipėda, two nights

Stay in the old town on the south bank, which puts you five minutes from the ferry, the castle and most of the restaurants. The blocks north of the river along H Manto are the newer centre and are convenient for the station.

Two nights gives an afternoon in the town, a full day on the spit as far as Nida, and the last morning across the water at Smiltynė.

Day by day

Day 1 in Klaipėda

Theatre Square, the castle bastion and the thing in the moat

Theatre Square is the middle of the old town, cobbled, low and German, with the theatre on one side. The statue in it is Ännchen von Tharau, Anna Neander, who lived from 1615 to 1689 and whose wedding prompted a doting poem by Simon Dach that was later set to music and became one of the best known German folk songs. Hitler gave a speech from the theatre balcony behind her in March 1939, two days after Lithuania handed the city back under threat. The whole district around the square is on a grid because a fire flattened it in 1854, and the rebuild produced the half timbering and the yellow brick you are walking between. Look down and sideways as you go: the city has scattered small odd sculptures through these streets, a mouse, a chimney sweep, a dragon, most of them with a rubbing superstition attached.

Klaipėda Castle is ten minutes away and is more of an outline than a castle. The Livonian branch of the Teutonic Order built it in 1253 at the harbour mouth, and for five hundred years successive powers knocked it down and put it back up, the last time in 1763. After that even the Prussians could not think what to do with it, so it fell apart and the stone was carted off. One bastion survives, with the moat around it, and the museum inside covers the very complicated question of who this city has belonged to.

The Black Ghost is on the quay by the footbridge over the moat outlet. It is a hooded bronze figure hauling itself out of the water with a lantern, put up in 2010 and based on a story from 1595 in which a sentry on the castle wall was warned by an apparition that the town's grain and timber stores were running low. It is unnerving in daylight and worse at night, which is the point.

  1. 15:00

    Theatre Square

    Visit

    The cobbled heart of the old town, with the Ännchen von Tharau statue in the middle and small strange sculptures hidden in the streets around it.

  2. 16:30

    Klaipėda Castle

    Other

    One surviving bastion and a moat, all that is left of the 1253 Teutonic castle, with a museum inside on the city's changes of nationality.

  3. 18:00

    Black Ghost

    Visit

    A hooded bronze figure climbing out of the castle moat with a lantern. Two minutes from the castle, and better after dark.

  4. 19:00

    Dinner on the Danė

    Eat

    The riverfront either side of the bridge is where the town eats, and fish smoked over alder is the thing to order. Prices here are noticeably below Vilnius.

With more time: Moored on the river a few minutes upstream is the Meridianas, a three masted barquentine launched in Finland in 1948 as one of ninety one wooden vessels built as war reparations to the Soviet Union. She trained sailors until 1968, sat here rotting for decades, and is now restored as a restaurant. Two streets away, the clock museum has a large and unexpectedly good collection of timepieces in a garden with a sundial.

Day 2 in Klaipėda

Down the spit: witches in a wood, grey dunes, and Thomas Mann's house

Take the passenger ferry across at the old terminal, pick up the N1 bus at Smiltynė or a bike, and go south. The spit is a strip of sand between one and four kilometres wide with a road down the middle of it, pine forest on both sides, the Curonian Lagoon to the east and the open Baltic to the west, and it is never more than a few minutes' walk to either shore.

The first stop is Juodkrantė, twenty kilometres down, and the Hill of Witches. From 1979 Lithuanian woodcarvers began putting sculptures along a path through the pine dune above the village, and there are now more than eighty of them: devils, witches, a dragon, figures from folk tales, a slide for children carved as a monster. It was a way of keeping a national tradition alive under Soviet rule that could be presented as harmless folk art, and it works both as that and as a walk in the woods. Free, and forty minutes end to end.

The Grey Dunes are the strangest landscape on the spit, about ten kilometres further. These are the dead dunes, rising to nearly sixty metres and fixed in place by a thin skin of soil and lichen, and beneath them are four villages that the sand buried in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries after the forest that held it was cut down for shipbuilding. There is a one kilometre boardwalk from the car park and you must stay on it. The wind carries sand constantly, so contact lens wearers should think ahead.

Nida is the end of the road, five kilometres from the Russian border, and it is a village of blue and brown wooden fishermen's cottages with carved gable finials. Thomas Mann built a summer house on the hill above it and spent the summers of 1930, 1931 and 1932 there writing part of Joseph and His Brothers, and then never came back, because by 1933 he could not. The house is a museum now, small, plain and with the best view on the spit from its terrace. There is a literary festival there for a week each July.

  1. 09:30

    Hill of Witches

    Nature

    Over eighty wooden devils, witches and folk figures on a path through the pines above Juodkrantė, carved from 1979 onwards. Free, and about forty minutes.

  2. 12:00

    Grey Dunes

    Nature

    Dead dunes almost sixty metres high, held down by lichen, with four buried villages underneath them. A one kilometre boardwalk, and stay on it.

  3. 14:00

    Lunch in Nida

    Eat

    The harbour front at Nida does smoked fish from the lagoon, which is the local speciality and is sold from the same wooden huts it always was. Everything is booked out in August.

  4. 15:30

    Thomas Mann Culture Centre

    Other

    Thomas Mann's summer house of 1930 to 1932, restored as a museum, with the best terrace view on the spit.

With more time: Nida holds two more small museums, one on the history of the spit and one on amber, which is washed up along this coast and has been traded from here since the Bronze Age. The lighthouse above the village is a twenty seven metre concrete tower of 1953, replacing an 1874 one destroyed in the war, and it is open in season. If you have a bike rather than a bus, the Parnidis dune south of the village with its sundial is the walk to do at sunset.

Day 3 in Klaipėda

Five minutes across the water

Smiltynė is the northern tip of the spit and technically part of Klaipėda, five minutes away on the passenger ferry, and it is where the city goes to the beach. The Lithuanian Sea Museum occupies the old Kopgalis fortress there, a nineteenth century Prussian coastal work with a circular courtyard, and it holds the aquariums, the marine life and the maritime history collections, with a dolphinarium alongside on a separate ticket.

The other reason to cross is that the walk is short and the beach is good. Ten minutes over the dune from the ferry landing puts you on open Baltic sand facing west, with nothing between you and Sweden, and the paved track south along the shore leads to the nineteenth century breakwater at the harbour mouth, which is a good half hour there and back for the ships coming in.

The ferry lands you back in the old town within walking distance of everything, which makes this the right shape for a last morning.

  1. 10:00

    Lithuanian Sea Museum

    Culture

    Aquariums and maritime history in a Prussian coastal fort at the tip of the spit, five minutes across on the passenger ferry. The dolphinarium costs about as much again.

With more time: The South Pier, the old breakwater at the very end of the spit, is a paved walk from the museum and is where people go to watch the cargo ships thread the harbour mouth. In a westerly it is wet and worth it.

Before you go

Getting in

Trains from Vilnius run every couple of hours and take four and a half hours, through Kaunas's hinterland and Šiauliai. There is no direct train from Kaunas: you change at Vilnius or Šiauliai and it takes five hours, so take the coach instead. The station is a Prussian yellow brick building of 1881 with a 1980s red brick one attached, fifteen minutes' walk north of the old town.

Coaches are usually the better answer, running from Vilnius, Kaunas and Riga, and from Palanga, Vilnius, Kaunas and Riga airports. Palanga airport is twenty five kilometres north and the nearest, with a handful of European routes.

Ferries from Kiel and Karlshamn dock here, which makes Klaipėda a genuine way into Lithuania from Germany or Sweden rather than a curiosity.

Getting around

The city runs north to south along the coast and one spine of bus routes runs its length: bus 8 every five to ten minutes down Taikos Prospektas, bus 9 every ten minutes nearer the shore past the old ferry terminal and the castle. A paper ticket from a kiosk is cheaper than one from the driver, and you validate it as you board. The old town itself is a twenty minute walk end to end.

There are two ferries across to the spit. The passenger ferry from the old town terminal takes five minutes and lands at Smiltynė, which is where the sea museum is. The car ferry leaves from a terminal further south. Both run frequently in summer and less so out of it.

Down the spit, bus N1 runs from Smiltynė every two hours, carries bicycles and goes as far as Nida. The alternative, and the better one in summer, is to hire a bike: there is a paved cycle path the whole ninety kilometres to the Russian border, flat, through pine forest, with the lagoon on one side.

When to go

July and August are the season and the spit is genuinely busy in them, with Nida booked out and the ferries queueing. It is also the only time everything runs at full frequency and the Baltic is warm enough to consider swimming in, at about eighteen degrees on a good day.

June and September are better. The dunes are empty on a weekday, the cycle path is a pleasure, and the light on the lagoon in September is the reason painters kept coming here.

Klaipėda's Sea Festival at the end of July fills the whole city for three days and is the largest event in the Lithuanian calendar outside Vilnius. Winter on the spit is bleak, beautiful and largely shut.

Klaipėda itself is a two hour town and it does not pretend otherwise. What it has is position: a working port with a German past on one bank, and on the other a ninety nine kilometre bar of sand that buried four villages, sheltered a Nobel laureate for three summers, and grew eighty wooden devils in a pine wood.

Give the spit the whole day and get as far as Nida. Turning back at Juodkrantė is the mistake everybody who is short of time makes.

Or make it a longer trip

These trips pass through here on the way somewhere else.

Make it your trip

Every stop, day and place here lands in your account as an editable trip. Move the days around, swap a city, add your own bookings and costs, and share it with whoever is coming.

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Common questions

Can I do the Curonian Spit as a day trip?
Yes, and the day above is that trip. The bus down the spit runs every two hours, so check the return before you commit to Nida, or hire a bike and take the ninety kilometre paved path, which is flat and one of the best cycle routes in northern Europe. Staying a night in Nida instead is the luxury version.
Can I cross into the Russian half?
No, not as a practical matter. The Curonian Spit continues south into Kaliningrad and the border crossing at Nida is closed to ordinary travellers. The Lithuanian half is fifty two kilometres of it and is the part worth seeing anyway.
Is Palanga worth adding?
If you want a resort. It is twenty five kilometres north, it has the longest pier on the coast, a botanical park around a Tiškevičiai palace holding the country's best amber collection, and in July a nightlife that Lithuanians travel a long way for. It is the opposite of the spit in every respect.
How much German is left?
Very little in people and a good deal in the buildings. The population was almost entirely replaced after 1945, so the German language is gone, but the street grid, the half timbering, the yellow brick warehouses, the Prussian fort at Smiltynė and the fishermen's houses down the spit are all Memel rather than Klaipėda, and the town museums are honest about it.