Summer is the most appropriate season for visiting museums in the open air. In Lithuania there are several museums of such kind. Here we present one of them.

Summer is the most appropriate season for visiting museums in the open air. There you may enjoy not only the exhibits of the museum, but also the nature; you may breath fresh air. In Lithuania there are several museums of such kind. Here we present one of them.

Open Air Museum in Rumðiðkës.

In this museum in the open year old Lithuanian culture is tried to be kept: places of living, household articles. The real citizen, who is sitting opposite the computer all day long, should drive to the countryside and look how the Lithuanian forefathers lived. It would be healthy both for your body and spirit.

The museum was founded in 1996. Since the year 1967 to the territory of swamps and woods we began to bring old buildings from different places of Lithuania. So, little by little the folk social museum was founded. Waking the road, which is 5 kilometers long you may observe the old buildings of Aukðtaitija, Dzûkija, Suvalkija and Þemaitija. Every region has its own features, of course and differs in its buildings, housekeeping, it is only needed to scrutinize. There are 80 000 exhibits in the museum. These are the buildings of the main ethnographical regions of Lithuania and the collection of household articles (furniture, textile, crockery, and others). Walking in the museum you feel as if you were in the village of XVIII century. In the country houses one looks after the flower gardens, and it seems that somebody lives there now.

It turned out that the Lithuanians began making different useful household articles long time ago. Discovery of Þemaièiai – special oven for the heating of food, device for the sewing of rubber footwear, which was found in the different places of Lithuania, original wood and straw toys, decorations.

It is impossible not to pay attention at a huge windmill, at the pigeon-fanciers of an interesting shape (decorative doves were bred there), at the oval beehives and at the wooden church.

A little bit further from the country house the yurt is placed. Deportee exiled from Lithuania to Siberia lived in such yurts. The iron train wagon in which Lithuanians went there is placed behind them.

A small town was also founded near Þemaitija – but the houses there are not as small as in ancient times. They are two-stored. If you open the door of the house the potter will offer you to buy earthenware crockery, and if you will find the potter at home you will be able to watch him making pot. In the amber master shop the amber is worked up and traded. A unique collection of the Lithuanian sculptor A. Juozapavièius is presented. The visitors are shocked with the modernism of the wooden hand-made, though they have the features of the Lithuanian ancient art. The special sculptor’s attitude at the world and irony is reflected in the exhibits.

St. Florion stands at the center of the marketplace of the town. The forefathers believed that he was protecting the town from the fire.

The majority comes to this museum during the Lithuanian holidays. This year during the Midsummer day the village of Lithuanian customs was filled with the nation songs, joyful yelping of children.

Address: S. Nëries str. 6, LT-4237 Rumðiðkës, Kaiðiadoriø region
Works: every day, from 10h till 18h.
Telephone: 8-256) 47233
Fax: (8-256) 51589
E-mail: lbm@is.lt
About the museum the website of the Lithuanian museums