Lithuania used to be the largest country in Europe, stretching, under the rule of Grand Duke Vytautas in 1430, from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea (a feat achieved, incidentally, not by conquest but by inclusiveness and diplomacy).  Lithuania was also a Soviet Republic for half a century, and Vilnius, its capital, wears on its sleeve the evidence of just how far the country’s come since independence in 1991 (and joining the EU in 2004).

After much restoration, Vilnius is back to being its ridiculously beautiful self. Home to about half a million, it’s one of the most pleasing cities in northeastern Europe: distinctive and familiar, exalted and accessible, storied and gloried, ambitious, confident, tragic, romantic and, these days, very, very lively.

Where to stay

The Narutis (Pilies str 24; + 370 5 2122894; www.narutis.com) is sometimes said to be the best hotel in Vilnius, and is well-appointed if stuffy. The Reval Hotel Lietuva (Konstitucijos pr. 20; +371 6 777 2345; www.revalhotels.com) is gigantic and well-run by a Finn, but is a good walk across the river from old town. If you want to play it safe and be confident of a perfect location, try the Radisson (Didzioji 35/2; +370 5 2120 110;www.radissonblu.com/hotel-vilnius). If you don’t mind staying 10 minutes by foot from the action, the moderately priced Algirdas (Algirdo str. 24; +370 5 2326650; www.algirdashotel.lt), is one of the newest hotels in Vilnius. Or if you want to be fully self-sufficient and rent a flat, contact Darius at VIP Apartments (+370 6984 7355; www.vipapartments.lt/?en).

Where to eat

Vilnius doesn’t have many fine dining options, but if you need a special restaurant, try Saint Germain (Literatu 9; +370 5 2621 210; www.vynine.lt) or DOMM (Didzioji 31; +370 686 77707;www.domm.lt) in the Town Hall, which is reputedly the best in town.

The atmospheric Uzupis Café (Uzupio 2; +370 5 2122 138;www.uzupiokavine.lt) is famed as the bar, restaurant and parliament house of the Uzupis Republic. Here you can try saltibarsciai (cold borscht with potatoes – good stuff) or cepelinai (potato dumplings stuffed with minced meat; a real Lithuanian classic – the classic, actually, but not to everybody’s taste) or kepta duona (fried rye bread with garlic and cheese) and wash it down with the ubiquitous Lithuanian brewsky, Svyturys Extra.

In the district of Gedimino, Neringa (Gedimino Avenue 23;+370 5 2614 058; www.restoranasneringa.lt) is a great place for lunch and a glimpse of classic Soviet interior design; the specialty of the house is deep-fried chicken Kiev. Slightly further out but worth the walk (over the bridge, past the Seimas parliament building) is the quirky, classy, hip Jalta (Vykinto 17a) which is good for drinks or food, day or night.

Elsewhere, the Contemporary Art Centre café (Vokieciu 2; + 370 5 2121945; www.cac.lt) is a stylish place to grab a bite to eat for lunch or dinner while Manonering Guru (Vilniaus 22; +370 5 2120 126; lunch only) has a vast selection of fresh salads.

Where to party

Many locals feel Pabo Latino (Traku 3/2; +370 5 2621 045;www.pabolatino.lt) is a bit of a meat market, but it’s also the snazziest club in Vilnius. Woo (Vilniaus 22; +370 5 2127 740;www.woo.lt) draws a good crowd, but can get stiflingly hot. They have a lot of live acts, including the jazz that Lithuanians are famous for. The salon-ish Mano Alibi (Totoriu 18; + 370 5 212 5051; www.manoalibi.lt), with its flecked wallpaper, has a wall-to-wall crowd even on a Tuesday night. Paparazzi (Totoriu 3; +370 5 2120 135; www.paparazzi.lt) a block away, is a wryly themed institution with an extensive cocktail menu.

For a mellower scene, or to kick off the evening, head for In Vino (Ausros Vartu 7; +370 5 2121 210; www.invino.lt), not far from the Gates of Dawn, or Tappo D’oro (Stuokos-Guceviciaus 7; +370 686 168 66; www.tempolibero.lt) between the cathedral and the president’s palace. Both wine bars are done nicely (the latter exceptionally so), but with a local twist, and get packed at peak times so make a reservation beforehand if possible.

What to see

Vilnius is best understood as a place for ambling about. The entire downtown – the largest working old town in Europe – is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and a feast for the senses, especially in summertime. There are three key areas to check out: Pilies Street (and surrounds), Gedimino Avenue (and surrounds) and the district of Uzupis.

The Gates of Dawn and Pilies (Castle) Street

The Gates of Dawn is the last of the original entrances through the mostly long-gone city wall. A few blocks down from here is the restored Town Hall square. Off the square is Vokeciu [German] Street, a wide boulevard at the corner of which is the Contemporary Arts Centre. Incidentally, Vilnius was one of the most important Jewish cities in Europe – the Jerusalem of the north – and this whole neighbourhood was the heart of Jewish Vilnius prior to WWII; Vokeciu Street divided two of the ghettos.

Further down Pilies Street you’ll pass Vilnius University (Universteto 3; +370 5 2687 0001; www.vu.lt), Lithuania’s Harvard and one of the oldest universities in Eastern Europe. Close to the bottom of Pilies, turn right down Mykolo Street and stop at the Amber Gallery (Myklo Str 8; +370 5 2625 241;www.ambergallery.lt). There’s a tiny, free “museum” downstairs, and if you want to buy amber, some of the best is sold here. Amber has deep cultural and mythological significance in Lithuania’s pagan heritage, making it an appropriate souvenir.

Castle Hill and Gedimino Avenue

There is only one thing in Vilnius you really must see, and that’s the KGB museum (Auku str. 2a; +370 5 249 7427;www.genocid.lt/muziejus/en/). It’s actually called the Genocide Victims’ Museum, but since it manages to gloss completely over the awful period of Nazi occupation from 1941 to 1944, its common name is more accurate and more deserved. If you have only ten minutes between meetings, then just go downstairs and walk the length of the prison. It won’t be pleasant, but you’ll be doing your job as a human. The museum is free and keeps reasonable hours. Don’t miss it.

Climb the Castle Hill (or take the funicular) up to what’s left of the castle. The view, plus the wooden scale models of the city at various stages on display inside, will give you the lay of the land of Vilnius. At the base of the hill is the cathedral. The separate tower is the bell tower, and it’s the chief visual icon of the city. Put the cathedral at your back and walk straight up Gedimino Avenue. This was Lenin’s Prospekt during Soviet Times, and remains Vilnius’s main drag. Make a right opposite the Novotel, and walk down Vilniaus Street to the river and the Green Bridge, which exhibits probably the only four ideologically Soviet statues still standing in the country (if you’re curious about Soviet architecture, seek out the Lietuva cinema and the Soviet wedding palace, both of which are truly impressive examples). From here you’ll also glimpse a few of the city’s modern skyscrapers across the river.

The Uzupis Republic

My favourite Vilnius neighbourhood and the first settlement built outside the protective city walls. It fell into disrepair after it was cleared of its Jewish inhabitants in the Holocaust and was subsequently taken over by artists, thieves, prostitutes and suchlike, before declaring itself a faux-independent republic in 2000. Its current incarnation is a welcoming admixture of truly Bohemian and genuinely gentrified.

On your way there, make sure you notice St Anne’s church, a red brick gothic building which Napoleon wanted to take home in his pocket for Josephine. Walk along the river behind the Uzupis Café and find the Bridge to Nowhere, the Galera (Uzupio2;www.umi.lt) art gallery (typical artsy Uzupis), and the sculptures in the river. If you go back and carry on up the main street you came in on, up to the square, you’ll see the Uzupis Angel on a pillar in the centre.

If you’ve got any time (or energy) left, follow the road up the hill, take the right fork and pop into the hideaway known as Snekutis (Polocko 7a; +370 6504 7058)  for a bottle of beer or gira (refreshing fermented bread drink) and a side of garlicky smoked pig’s ears. If it’s a warm, sunny day, though, take the left fork instead and visit Tores (Uzupio 40; +370 603 90524;www.tores.lt) which has a memorable view of the city’s spires, tiled roofs and forested hillsides from its terrace.

Out of town

About 40 minutes from Vilnius is the country’s ancient capital, Trakai, with a restored Teutonic castle situated on an island in a lake. Go anytime of year (by train, car or organized tour). There’s a formal restaurant close to the bridge, or the casual standby Kybynlar (Karaim? g.29; +370 698 06320; www.kybynlar.lt), serving the food (and teaching you something of the culture) of the local Karaite people, a wandering Turkic tribe that settled here ages ago.

Best read

Vilnius: City of Strangers is the best single volume on the city. Says one rave review, it contains “diary entries, letters, jottings and other personal prose written about Vilnius over the past 700 years or so by visitors to the city including Dostoyevsky, G. K. Chesterton, Napoleon, Stendahl and others….Brimming with tales and observations of Germans, Jews, Poles, Russians, Tartars, Belarussions and of course Lithuanians to name but a few who’ve helped shape the city.”

What you should know

Lithuanian’s the language here (standard Roman alphabet; it helps if you happen to know Sanskrit, to which it’s closely related), but you can gingerly assume English is understood (and spoken with a considerable range of proficiency) by professionals, shopkeepers and everyone under the age of 30. It’s even easier to get by in Russian, the speaking of which will cause no offence; the ethnic Russians here are well integrated, so unlike in the other two Baltic countries Estonia and Latvia, speaking Russian in Lithuania won’t provoke any sensitivities.

The weekly podcasts of the Mondayjazz musical group (www.mondayjazz.com) have reputedly gained a worldwide following and may just put you in a Vilnius mood before – and after – your visit.

Words and photos by Jeremy Hildreth (www.jeremyhildreth.com) Originally published on Globalista as Globalista’s Mini-Guide to Vilnius.

Take, for example, this scene in Vilnius (where I am delighted to be living for the summer), which I photographed while jogging today.

It is a normal scene, a bit of urban decay, some concrete blight. Very common around here. You might think to yourself, “Those poor kids [the ones barely visible at the lower right] grow up playing in such ugly, rundown parks.”

True enough. But I knew, only because I happened to discover it two days ago, that that ugly cement mound is a plinth, upon which used to be this monument to Soviet partisans who terrorized the country with Stalin’s sponsorship:

When Lithuania got its independence in 1991, this statue and dozens like it were dismantled — immediately and with fervour — and a large number wound up in Gruto Parkas in southern Lithuania, where they are now a tourist attraction (and where the above photograph was taken, not by me).

So, yes, this local park is a bit on the ugly side. But those kids are growing up in a free country, as EU citizens.

Typing this now, I remember walking through the Killing Fields in 2002 and seeing Cambodian children splashing happily in the rainwater that had half-filled a pit which used to be a mass open grave. It was a scene of awful poverty — yet so much better than the historical alternative.

I guess my point is that without knowing the fuller context of things, sometimes your eyes play tricks on you, and you don’t really see what you’re looking at. If you’re an innocent kid, that’s so much the better. But if you’re a consultant like me, or an interested traveller, it’s worth bearing in mind.

After getting my passport stamped – and being given a pair of 3D glasses – by bubbly girls in jumpsuits at a makeshift border crossing, I spent a very, very good part of late afternoon at the Uzupio Kavine, which, the republic’s treasury secretary explained to me on the veranda, is the café, the bar and the parliament house.

The republic was founded in 1997 and has its own [fake] money – one unit of which is always good for a glass of beer at the bar here, making it “the world’s most stable currency” according to the secretary – and its owned famed constitution, which guarantees (amongst a laundry list of other curious, charming and sometimes rather enlightened tenets) that:

• Everybody has the right to live by the River Vilnele, and the River Vilnele has the right to flow by everybody.
• Everybody has the right to appreciate their unimportance.
• Everyone may share what they possess.
• No one can share what they do not possess.
• Everyone is responsible for their freedom.
• Everyone has the right to cry.
• A dog has the right to be a dog.