In over slightly more than 2 months, 46 thousand visitors from all over Lithuania visited the Euro Exhibition, which was open at the National Museum Palace of the Grand Dukes of Lithuania. It was arranged with a view to introducing in advance the population to the new currency.
“The abundance of visitors, interest in the euro exceeded expectations. In terms of the number of visitors we have outperformed a great many of the other countries in which this exhibition had been staged. This was due to the willingness of the population to know the future money, the multifaceted programme of events, the courteous team of guides, the particularly convenient and attractive venue for visitors,” Giedrius Simonavičius, Director of the Communications Department at the Bank of Lithuania, assessed the results of the Exhibition.
Guided tours with cash experts and Euro Exhibition guides were arranged more than 300 times. Visitors were introduced to the design, production, and security features of the euro banknotes as well as the destruction of worn-out money. Tour participants have learnt to differentiate a genuine banknote from a counterfeit, got acquainted with the coins of all of the euro area countries, which as of 1 January are valid in Lithuania as well.
The exhibition was mainly attended by groups of schoolchildren and older-aged people, as well as groups of colleagues, families, students and individuals. Assessment questionnaires that visitors were asked to fill in revealed that 98 per cent of respondents assessed this exhibition positively.
Visitors — from the youngest children to the eldest people — found activities that interest them at the Euro Exhibition. The youngest visitors, with their parents, were expected at the Family Days. There they watched an interactive performance of the actors’ troupe Teatriukas and participated in it, worked at creative workshops, solved puzzles, artistic, geographic and other tasks.
Elder visitors gathered to meeting afternoons with Vitas Vasiliauskas, Chairman of the Board of the Bank of Lithuania, Ingrida Šimonytė and Raimondas Kuodis, deputy chairpersons of the Board, and Marius Jurgilas, member of the Board. The lectures “Vytis: from the Lithuanian Denar to the Euro.” and “The History of Architecture in the Euro Banknotes”, the films “From the History of the Litas. Banknotes.” and “From the History of the Litas. Coins.” received great attention.
To report on Lithuania’s preparations for the adoption of the euro, representatives of the BBC,France24, NHK (National Broadcaster of Japan), The New York Times (USA), Croatian, Swiss, Belarus, Polish and many other foreign media attended the Exhibition.
A website and a Facebook profile were created specifically for this Exhibition. These measures helped register visitors for guided tours, events, sharing up-to-date information, interesting facts, organise various competitions.
The Euro Exhibition was organised by the European Central Bank and the Bank of Lithuania in cooperation with the Museum Palace of the Grand Dukes of Lithuania. From Vilnius, having been supplemented with the Lithuanian euro coins with the Vytis as well as litas banknotes and coins, the Exhibition will go to Osnabrück in Germany.
The Euro Exhibition, since 2008, has travelled over 15 different cities in 12 European countries, including Estonia and Latvia. It has already been attended by over 300 thousand visitors (not including Lithuania).
