Plungė Manor

The Oginski family built this palace in the 1870s in a neo-Renaissance manner, a long two-storey house with a tower, set in a park of some fifty hectares with ponds, bridges, old oaks and a gatehouse. Mykolas Oginskis ran an orchestra and a music school here, and the young Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis, later Lithuania's most celebrated painter and composer, studied in it under Oginskis's patronage, which is the manor's chief claim on the national memory. The house now holds the Samogitian Art Museum, with collections of painting and applied art and rooms on the Oginskis and Čiurlionis. The park is open freely and includes the Perkūnas oak, a very large tree, and a wooden bell tower.

History

Plungė manor is mentioned from 1565 and was long a landholding of the Grand Duke of Lithuania, run by noble families from the Dorohostaiskiai to the Karp; in 1779 King Stanisław Augustus gave it to the Vilnius bishop Ignacy Jakub Massalski (Wikipedia, Plungė Manor).

What you'll find

• The neo-Renaissance palace - the Oginski house and its tower.
• The art museum - Samogitian collections and the Čiurlionis rooms.
• The park - fifty hectares of ponds, bridges and old oaks.
• The Perkūnas oak - the great tree in the grounds.

When to go

May to September for the park; the museum is open year round and closes on Mondays. Autumn colour in the oaks is excellent. Summer brings concerts in the grounds.

What to expect

Interiors are museum galleries rather than furnished period rooms. Labelling is largely in Lithuanian. The Čiurlionis connection is more biographical than material; his works are in Kaunas. The park is the better half of the visit.

Nearby

Žemaičių Kalvarija lies north; Telšiai is northeast.

Key facts