The Museum offers not only expositions inside and four themed routes that visitors can take, but also has open expositions outside – the Small and Grand courtyards, the Renaissance Garden, bas-reliefs dedicated to Bona Sforza and Tito Livio Burattini, and a monument created to memorialise the letters of Gediminas from 1323. These expositions give visitors further information about the history of the Palace of the Grand Dukes of Lithuania, and the people who lived and worked here.
The Precepts of Grand Duke of Lithuania Gediminas to Vilnius and Lithuania
It was precisely in this castle, most probably in the residential donjon, that Grand Duke of Lithuania dictated his famous letters in 1323–1324, addressed to Pope John XXII, the Hanseatic cities and Franciscan and Dominican monasteries, in which he invited merchants, craftspeople, peasants, knights and monks to come to Vilnius.
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Renaissance Garden
The Renaissance Garden of the Palace of the Grand Dukes of Lithuania reflects the stylistics characteristic of a Renaissance-era representational residence’s surroundings and landscape planning, including the herbs and decorative plants that would have been grown in the 16th century.
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Bas-relief dedicated to the author of the unit of length – the metre – created in Vilnius, Tito Livio Burattini
The term for the unit of length the “metre” was created in 17th-century Vilnius. Its author was Tito Livio Burattini (1617–1681) – an Italian physicist, mathematician, geographer, Egyptologist, architect, inventor, diplomat and finance specialist, a true Leonardo da Vinci of the North.
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Bas-relief of Bona Sforza
The site chosen for the bas-relief of Bona Sforza is the Renaissance Garden bearing her name, so that all residents and guests to the city of Vilnius can admire the work as they pass by the Museum and recall this eminent figure.
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Grand Courtyard of the Palace of the Grand Dukes of Lithuania
Investigation of the palace and Grand Courtyard began in 1987, while in 2002–2018 it was reconstructed and a museum was opened on the site. Various events are held in the Grand Courtyard.
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Small Courtyard of the Palace of the Grand Dukes of Lithuania
On the western foot of Castle Hill, atop a sandy cape, construction began of the enclosed type pre-Gothic Early Brick Castle in the 1270s–1280s. This castle, built by the ancestors of the Gediminid dynasty, abutted a ravine leading down from Castle Hill at its northern aspect. In the mid-14th century, the natural ravine was reinforced with logs and transformed into a defensive trench for the castle. By the second half of the 14th century, as the Vilnius Lower Castle was enlarged, the ravine was filled and wooden buildings started being built in its place.
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