Museum of the Three Nations opens in Alytus district

Travel enthusiasts have yet another reason to come to Butrimonys, a town in the Alytus district. Next to the historic square and the popular fountain, an ethnographic museum has opened, with interactive exhibitions showcasing the inhabitants of three nations.

Butrimonys is a Lithuanian cultural property, and the triangular square is the only one of its kind in Lithuania on the Urban Monuments List. The founder of the town is Duke Vytautas the Great (14th-15th centuries). The history of Butrimonys has been shaped for hundreds of years by the Lithuanians, Tatars and Jews who lived here together, and whose lives are presented in the museum.

The symbolic ribbon of the opening of the museum was cut by the Mayor of the district A. Vrubliauskas, the Director of the Municipality Administration Gintarė Jociunskaitė, the Director of the Butrimonys Gymnasium V. Valvonis, the Elder of Butrimonys Eldership of Butrimonys Municipality Andrius Karlonas, and the Chairman of the Alytus District Tatar Community and the Chairman of the Alytus Region Raižiai Muslim Religious Community Ipolitas Makulavičius.

The first visitors of the museum, the residents of the town, members of the municipal council and students of the gymnasium, were introduced to the expositions by the history teacher Dalia Adžgauskienė and the elder of Butrimoniai Andrius Karlonas.

The exhibits were donated to the Museum by the Museum of Regional History of Butrimonys Gymnasium and by the residents. Interactive exhibits and interactions have been created to help people learn about Lithuanian, Tatar and Jewish religion, culinary heritage, crafts and the history of the town.

The museum was established after the implementation of the project "Cultural Heritage Speaks for Us" by the Butrimonys Gymnasium of Alytus district and the municipality of Pisz district (Republic of Poland), which was funded under the Interreg V-A Lithuanian-Polish Cross-Border Cooperation Programme under the European territorial cooperation objective Interreg V-A.

In recent years, Butrimonys has become a tourist destination. A flask-shaped fountain in the historic square, reconstructed by the municipality, is a major attraction. Inside the fountain, a huge whirlpool of water swirls around and is illuminated in different colours in the evening. Visitors to Butrimonys have voted it one of the most beautiful fountains in Lithuania.

The square has a monument to Senda Valvrojenski, the pioneer of women's basketball in the world, erected on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of Lithuanian basketball, as well as rest areas and playgrounds for children. Near Butrimonys, in the village of Raižiai, there is a monument to Vytautas the Great, a mosque from the Soviet era, and two sundials, one of which shows the local time and the other the time in Grunwald (Poland). These are the only such clocks in Lithuania.

Information of the Alytus District Municipality