Ninth Fort Museum
Tsarist fortress and Holocaust memorial site on the edge of Kaunas, with a vast concrete monument.
The Ninth Fort was completed in 1913 as the last of the defensive works ringing Kaunas under the Russian Empire. It was used as a prison in the interwar republic, and during the Nazi occupation it became a mass killing site where tens of thousands of people, most of them Jews from Kaunas and from countries across occupied Europe, were murdered. A museum was opened in 1959 and now covers both the fort's military history and the occupations of Lithuania, alongside the Holocaust.
Visitors move between the old brick and earth casemates, where cells and corridors are preserved, and a separate exhibition building of 1984 by Gediminas Baravykas and Vytautas Vielius. On the field beyond stands the memorial to the victims of fascism, a group of three angular concrete forms some thirty-two metres high designed by the sculptor Alfonsas Ambraziūnas and unveiled in the same year. A recent exhibition covers those who sheltered Jews in Kaunas.
Highlights
- Preserved cells and casemates of the 1913 fortress
- Thirty-two-metre concrete memorial by Alfonsas Ambraziūnas
- Permanent displays on the Holocaust and the Soviet deportations
- Weekend guided tours, with an English-language tour at midday
![[King Thibaw Min's Throne Room - Mandalay]title QS:P1476,en:"[King Thibaw Min's Throne Room - Mandalay]"label QS:Len,"[King Thibaw Min's Throne Room - Mandalay]"](https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/02/Felice_Beato_%28British%2C_born_Italy_-_%28King_Thibaw_Min%27s_Throne_Room_-_Mandalay%29_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg/500px-Felice_Beato_%28British%2C_born_Italy_-_%28King_Thibaw_Min%27s_Throne_Room_-_Mandalay%29_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg)
