Palanga Amber Museum - History and Background

History and Background

The Baltic Sea coast has been a source of Eurasian amber trade since prehistoric times (see Amber Road). Neolithic artifacts made of amber were discovered in nearby Juodkrantė in the 19th century - these artifacts unfortunately disappeared during the 20th century. Lithuanian mythology, folklore, and art have long associations with amber; the legend of Jūratė and Kastytis imagines an undersea palace of amber under the Baltic, which was shattered by Perkūnas, the god of thunder. Its fragments were said to be the source of the amber that still washes up on the beaches nearby.

Amber workshops appeared in Palanga during the 17th century; guilds devoted to the material functioned in Brügge, Lübeck, Danzig, and Königsberg. By the end of the 18th century Palanga was the center of the Russian Empire's amber industry. In the years preceding World War I about 2,000 kilograms of raw amber were processed in Palanga annually.

In 1897 Feliks Tyszkiewicz, a member of an old Ruthenian/Lithuanian noble family that had long had a presence in Palanga, built the Neo-Renaissance-style palace that now houses the museum. Designed by the German architect Franz Heinrich Schwechten, it fell into disrepair after the disruptions of World War I and World War II. The palace was restored in 1957 according to plans by the architect Alfredas Brusokas. It opened as an amber museum in 1963 as a branch of the Lithuanian Museum of Fine Arts, with a small collection of about 480 pieces; it received its millionth visitor on August 13, 1970. The palace was incorporated into the Lithuanian Art Museum during the 1990s, and continues to expand.