Modern Developments
Gediminas Tower is a dominant and distinctive object in the skyline of the old city. An observation platform at its summit affords a panoramic view of Vilnius. In 2003, as part of the celebrations surrounding the 750th anniversary of the coronation of Mindaugas, the tower was made more accessible by the construction of a lift. It ascends about 70 meters during the 30-second ride, and holds sixteen passengers. Atop the tower, on January 1, 1919, the Lithuanian tricolor was hoisted for the first time. To commemorate this event, January 1 is now Flag Day, and the Lithuanian flag is ceremonially raised at the tower, as well as elsewhere in Lithuania. On October 7, 1988, during Lithuania's drive to re-establish its independence, 100,000 people gathered at the Castle Complex as the flag was re-hoisted. The tower and the hill, with the flag raised at its summit, are symbols of Lithuania's statehood and its struggle for independence, echoing a long tradition whereby sovereignty over the city was demonstrated by the flag flown there.
After preservation work was completed at the Gediminas Tower in 1968, it became a branch of the National Museum of Lithuania. The first floor of the tower exhibits photographs taken in Vilnius during the 19th and 20th centuries and models of historic Vilnius and the Castle Complex. The second floor exhibits flags that were used by Vytautas the Great's army during the Battle of Grunwald, along with authentic weaponry used from the 13th through the 18th centuries.
Other surviving buildings at the Castle Complex house offices of the National Museum of Lithuania and its archeology and numismatics departments, as well as the Museum of Applied Art. The museum contains about one million artifacts, covering a wide historic spectrum. Its collection includes pieces from Lithuania's prehistoric era, coins used throughout Lithuania's history, and a wide variety of artifacts dating from the Middle Ages and later. About 250,000 tourists visit the museum annually.
Read more about this topic: Vilnius Castle Complex
Famous quotes containing the words modern and/or developments:
“I lately met with an old volume from a London bookshop, containing the Greek Minor Poets, and it was a pleasure to read once more only the words Orpheus, Linus, Musæus,—those faint poetic sounds and echoes of a name, dying away on the ears of us modern men; and those hardly more substantial sounds, Mimnermus, Ibycus, Alcæus, Stesichorus, Menander. They lived not in vain. We can converse with these bodiless fames without reserve or personality.”
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“The developments in the North were those loosely embraced in the term modernization and included urbanization, industrialization, and mechanization. While those changes went forward apace, the antebellum South changed comparatively little, clinging to its rural, agricultural, labor-intensive economy and its traditional folk culture.”
—C. Vann Woodward (b. 1908)