Historic Trakai

Trakai Historical National Park was established in 1992 some twenty-five kilometres west of Vilnius and protects some 82 km². Its status is singular within the Lithuanian system: it is the only national park in the country conceived as historical, with the conservation of cultural heritage on an equal footing with that of the natural environment.

Its landscape is a system of more than thirty glacial lakes set among wooded hills, and on an island in Lake Galvė stands Trakai castle, a red-brick fortress built between the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries that was a residence of the grand dukes of Lithuania and one of the country's national symbols. On the shore survive the remains of the peninsula castle and several archaeological sites.

Trakai is home to one of the most singular communities in Europe: the Karaims, a people of Turkic origin and Karaite religion, brought from Crimea in the late fourteenth century by Grand Duke Vytautas as his personal guard. For six centuries they have kept their language, their liturgy, their architecture of three-windowed houses and their cuisine, and although today barely a few hundred members remain, their presence still defines the character of the town. Their temple, the kenesa, stands inside the park.