14. Palanga Stasys Vainiūnas Art School

About

This unique building was created as a children’s music school and to this day, hosts a new school year for budding artists come September. The school is named after the Lithuanian composer, teacher, and performer Stasys Vainiūnas. The architect Irena Likšienė was awarded the Outstanding Prize for Art for Children and Young People in 1982 for her design of the building, therefore there is little doubt that this exceptional building inspires creativity.

The building is three storeys high and quite massive, yet the spaces are visually subdivided into smaller areas to maintain a comfortable human scale. The axis of the building is the concert area, made up of indoor and outdoor stages. The blueprints of the building resemble the silhouette of a nocturnal moth.

One of the most beautiful elements of the building’s interior that has survived to this day is the stained-glass window “Muzika” by the Lithuanian stained-glass artist Konstantinas Eugenijus Šatūnas. Created in 1986, the composition rises upwards like an organ, the surface of the coloured glass leaves changing in the sunlight throughout the day, revealing a different colour scheme by the hour.

The building is also home to other works of art, both by graduates and donated by professional artists. Guests will feel overjoyed if they can solve the riddle of getting to the third floor without a staircase after visiting the impressive choir classroom in the third-floor bay window.