Church of St. Anne, Vilnius

Interesting facts

The church's namesake patroness, Anna, was the first wife of Grand Duke Vytautas the Great.

Apart from repairs, the brick exterior has stayed almost unchanged since it was completed around 1500.

During the 1902-1909 works, led by Father Jan Józef Łaboda to a project by Józef Pius Dziekoński, the walls were reinforced with iron.

The art historian Vladas Drėma argued that the facade echoes the Columns of Gediminas, an ancient Lithuanian heraldic symbol.

Abraomas Kulvietis, a key figure of the Lithuanian Reformation, preached here between 1538 and 1541.

St. Anne's remained open for worship throughout the Soviet era, and its towers were even repaired in the 1960s.

On 23 August 1987 the Lithuanian Liberty League held a rally against Soviet occupation in the square beside the church; police broke it up.

The 2009 restoration rebuilt the slender side spires of the facade, which had been missing for a long time.

Since 2018 the Archbishop of Vilnius has designated St. Anne's for the exclusive celebration of the traditional Latin, or Tridentine, Mass.

Why it is worth it

Few buildings make so much of plain brick as St. Anne's in Vilnius. Its narrow facade is a lattice of slender pillars, pointed arches and tracery, all built from 33 different shapes of fired clay brick and painted red, so that the whole front seems to rise like a carved screen. It is one of the finest examples of late, Flamboyant Brick Gothic in Eastern Europe and a signature image of the city's Old Town.

The first church on the site was a wooden one built for Anna, Grand Duchess of Lithuania, and it was destroyed by fire in 1419. The present building went up around 1495-1500 under Alexander Jagiellon and was consecrated in 1500. Its designer is unknown: the names of Michael Enkinger and Benedikt Rejt are both put forward, but neither attribution is backed by written records. Damaged by fire in 1582, it was rebuilt with the support of Mikołaj Radziwiłł the Black and his family, and later restorations followed in the 18th century, in 1902-1909, during the Soviet period and again in 2009. The free-standing Neo-Gothic bell tower beside it was added in the 1870s to designs by Nikolai Chagin.

St. Anne's forms part of a larger ensemble with the bigger Gothic church of St. Francis and St. Bernardine and its monastery, which stand beside it. A well-known story claims that Napoleon, passing through Vilnius in 1812, said he would like to carry the church back to Paris in the palm of his hand. Vilnius, the Lithuanian capital, grew up where the Vilnia meets the Neris, and its largely Baroque and Gothic Old Town has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1994.

Getting there

The church stands in the Old Town of Vilnius, about 1 km from the city centre. The nearest airport is Vilnius International Airport (VNO), about 5.5 km away.

From the encyclopaedia

St. Anne's Church is a Roman Catholic church in Vilnius' Old Town, on the right bank of the Vilnia river established circa 1495–1500. It is a prominent example of both Flamboyant and Brick Gothic styles. St. Anne's is a prominent landmark in the Vilnius Old Town that enabled the district to be named as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and is one of the most interesting examples of Gothic architecture in Lithuania.

Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

Church of St. Anne, Vilnius

Interesting facts

Why it is worth it

Getting there

Plan your visit

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From the encyclopaedia