Lithuania: landmarks, animals & facts for kids

Lithuania is a country in northeastern Europe on the Baltic Sea, the largest and southernmost of the three Baltic states. It borders Latvia, Belarus, Poland and the Russian region of Kaliningrad. Its capital is Vilnius, whose old town is full of Baroque churches. Lithuania is known for its forests and lakes, the sand dunes of the Curonian Spit, its very old language and its great love of basketball.

On My Earth Toy you can visit Gediminas' Tower, a red-brick tower on a hill above the old town of Vilnius. It is the last remaining part of the Upper Castle, and the Lithuanian flag flies from its top.

Geography and nature

Lithuania is mostly low plains and gentle hills shaped by ancient glaciers; its highest point, Aukštojas Hill, is only 294 metres tall. Forests cover about a third of the land, and there are thousands of lakes. The Nemunas is the longest river. On the coast, the Curonian Spit is a thin strip of sand nearly 100 kilometres long with some of the highest moving dunes in Europe; Lithuania shares it with Russia. White storks, the national bird, nest in large numbers on farms.

People, languages and culture

Lithuanian is the official language, and Polish and Russian are spoken by minorities. Lithuanian is one of only two living Baltic languages and has kept many very old word forms; linguists study it to learn about the ancient language that many European languages came from. Most people are Roman Catholic. At the Hill of Crosses, visitors have left tens of thousands of crosses. Basketball is almost a national religion, and the Lithuanian team has won Olympic medals.

History in a nutshell

Mindaugas was crowned king of Lithuania in 1253. In the 14th and 15th centuries, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania grew into one of the largest states in Europe, stretching toward the Black Sea. Lithuania joined Poland in a union in 1569. It was taken by the Russian Empire in 1795, declared independence on 16 February 1918, and was occupied by the Soviet Union in 1940. On 11 March 1990 it became the first Soviet republic to declare independence, and it joined the EU and NATO in 2004.