Although the world's first urban museum was founded in Paris in 1866, the wave of such museums in the West began in the early 20th century. The idea of a museum in Vilnius was also timely, dating back to the imperial period. The first known mention of a Vilnius City Museum dates back to 1912, but it was not until the inter-war period that the idea was put into practice.
At the turn of the 1930s and 1940s, a group of intellectuals, city lovers and academics from the then Polish city of Vilnius decided to set up a city museum. In 1929, 1930 and 1933, the press announced that the Magistrate's Office was planning to allocate 10,000 zlotys for the creation of a city museum. Various possibilities were considered as to where the museum could be located, from the Town Hall to the Sluškės Palace or part of the Franciscan Monastery on Trakai Street, where the archives were located at the time. It was here that the painter Ferdynandas Ruszczycas envisioned the future museum.
The Vilnius City Museum began on 15 March 1933. On that day, at a meeting with Wiktor Maleszewski, the President (Mayor) of Vilnius, the establishment of the Vilnius City Museum was discussed. The meeting was attended by Jan Bułhak, President of the Society of Lovers of Science, Michał Brensztejn, curator of the Museum of the Society of Lovers of Science, Stanisław Lorentz, the Conservator of the Voivodeship and others.
At that time, the vision of the city enthusiasts was not realized due to the lack of funds, but a few years later, in 1939, the Municipality acquired a building in the present-day building on the corner of K. Sirvydas street. As the City Museum took on a tangible form, the public began to donate artworks to the museum in large numbers.
This is how the museum's collection began to be assembled and artefacts related to the history of the capital began to be collected, but the museum never opened its doors after the outbreak of the Second World War. The idea of a Vilnius City Museum has been constantly popping up and disappearing, and since the first attempts to establish an institution dedicated to the citizens of Vilnius and the ever-changing city, it has been almost a hundred years since such a museum was first attempted.
The foundations for the current museum were laid in 2018 by the work of the researchers of the City of Vilnius - art historian and cultural manager Dr. Rasa Antanavičiūtė, architectural historian Dr. Marija Drėmaitė, and historian dr.
The creation of the Vilnius Museum was prompted by the upcoming anniversary of the city's 700th anniversary in 2023.
Next up, Vilnius has a long-awaited museum. This marks the beginning of a new phase in the city's museum history.
