A STROLL THROUGH A CITY WITHIN A CITY

The Old Town is made up of a mass of streets, small and back streets, lanes and cul de sacs. This is the city that we love, a city which recalls everything such as the times of the Great Silk Road and the revolution, as well as the first republic, the Second World War and the first and second oil booms. There is a special atmosphere here, a special way of life and style of contacts among people. Particular people live here such as artisans, master craftsmen and artists. And there are those who simply call themselves “fortress dwellers” in reference to the fortress there. Here and there throughout the inner city numerous cafes, little restaurants, souvenir shops and boutiques are dotted about. This is already the outcome of the times when numerous tourists have been attracted here following the “Eurovision” song contest. What else does the city have to offer visitors?

Time to vary the tour routes

The excursions for tourists offer our visitors a variety of itineraries. Nowadays quest tours are becoming increasingly popular in the world. On Kiev’s Andriyivskyy Descent [historic descent connecting the Ukrainian capital Kiev’s Upper Town with the historic business quarter below] and at the Mikhail Bulgakov Museum in Kiev stories of “White Guard” characters are acted out; in a little settlement near Piacenza in Italy people can pretend to be living in a mediaeval city; for the relevant amount you can dress up in 19th-century costumes as a duke or an ordinary person. Then you can spend the day pretending to be your chosen character. We could have similar types of excursions here too at some point. But for the moment we do not have them, so we increasingly see tourists just wandering around without following any particular route and strolling around The Old Town on their own. One tends to think that their experience of familiarising themselves with the city could somehow be made more varied. Naturally, you can read about everything on the Internet these days! But, as other people’s experience shows, information is remembered much better if it is learned with help of visual aids.

Going around Vilnius

For example, the Lithuanians have an Old Town in Vilnius too. It is called Zaraciansk Respublikine, and the Respublika Zarechye in Russian. You can see that tourists visit this area because the signposts are in four languages - Lithuanian, Hebrew, English and Russian. At first glance, this is just a town like any other. Houses built long ago, fairly wide cobbled streets and narrow lanes, little stalls and artisans’ boutiques. The architecture in our Old Town is much more exotic and varied in style. But when you find yourself in the centre of this “republic”, you understand that you have turned up in an amazing place, in a township of the arts, where the memory of writers, scholars, poets, artists and composers has been immortalised. There are even streets that prompt the tourists’ interest, like Literature Street for instance.

You enter The Old Town and on the walls of the houses you see the portraits of writers, philosophers and poets who have gone down in the history of Lithuanian culture. You can go up to them and look at the portraits of famous people, read quotations from their works and then move on. Then you find yourself on a street of Lithuanian artists from all times and also see portraits of them, their works and sayings by them reflecting their conceptual view of fine art. You will come across graphic art, painting, abstract art, installations, ceramics and conceptual art here. Then, in just the same way, you find yourself in a street of composers and musicians. If it turns out that you did not know anything about them, then there is a complete crib on the walls to prompt you and tell you who they are and why they are famous. But that is not all that you can see and enjoy in the city of artists and masters.

You can see the sculptures of abstract artists outside in the open air; there are works of the “underground” trend in secluded nooks, artists’ studios are open to the public where you can see craftsmen working in wood, cosy workshops making national costumes and so forth. If you find yourself there in the evening, the city of artists and craftsmen will seem to you like a wonderful fairy-tale where everything appears to be real and at the same time unreal. Roaming around these streets, you can come across “daring young people” who are permitted to use the battered, old walls as “big canvases”. When these walls have been transformed, they give the wandering tourists (and even the townspeople themselves) astoundingly colourful and thought-provoking things to look at! The striking works featuring subjects from science fiction, caricatures and characters from films and literature and still lives are just a few of the things that you can see when you walk round the “Republic on the Other Side of the River”, in the very heart of Vilnius, not far from the Gedeminas Tower.

Will there be writers here?

Here in The Old Town you can see something similar on the facade of the studio of the artist Ali Shamsa at 84 Malaya Krepostnaya [Little Fortress Street]. But neither the people he knows, nor tourists nor townspeople walk past his studio without going in. They all want to enter it and witness the ongoing creative process. Ever since Ali “turned” the trunk of a huge tree into the splendid face of a girl, it has become even more interesting there. People take selfies there, simply sit under the tree and lovers arrange to meet each other there. We have so many places like that which we could include in the tourist trails in the Old Town! How many walls and facades are there that could be “covered” with cartoons and the works of bold, young artists!

True, The Old Town is a conservation area preserving the architectural heritage of the people, so it is highly unlikely that such caricatures could decorate every wall. But, for all that, it would be really nice if the walls of The Old Town could remind us and tell visitors about our city and what a unique wealth of cultural heritage we have, what poets and philosophers of different ages, the artists, composers, scholars, singers, artistes, writers, and playwrights we boast! The Lithuanians gathered this information bit by bit and made this into an unobtrusive message directed into the expanses of time. Percentage-wise we can boast of a much greater cultural heritage! Why don’t we make it visual for all to see? Just imagine you are walking round the town with visitors and during your walk you come across a wall of writers and poets!

Here the entire path of creative thought development in the Land of Fires could be reflected in quotations, ranging from Nizami [1141-1209] to the present day! Then you turn into another street and you could see a wall of “Famous people from Baku”! The next street could be “Artists and sculptors”! Or it could be the “Family tree of the Rulers of Azerbaijan”, couldn’t it? You would see the history of all the ruling dynasties right before your very eyes! This would all be better than inscriptions like “Michael was here” scratched on the stones, like those that can be seen on the wall of the Shirvanshah Palace ensemble. This kind of walking trail could be of interest not only to visitors to our city, but to us ourselves. Do all of us know the history of our culture well? Nowadays, unfortunately, people read Shakespeare more than Nizami…