Kaunas: Meaningful Modernism

Coming up in this episode, we go up to Lithuania to find out the activities undertaken in Kaunas following the city’s remarkable success as European Capital of Culture in 2022 and its inscription to the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2023.During a meeting in Kraków, head of the Heritage Hub Katarzyna Jagodzińska speaks to researcher and architectural historian Vaidas Petrulis from the Kaunas University of Technology.They talk about the specificity of Kaunas’ modernist architecture in terms of its protection and recognition, as well as its importance for the Lithuanian nation during the inter-war period when the “true” Lithuanian capital – Vilnius – was part of Poland.The title of the UNESCO inscription is “Modernist Kaunas: Architecture of Optimism, 1919-1939”. Listen to the interview to find out more about what lies behind the inscription’s title and what this architecture means for the city today. This podcast was produced in the frame of and as an outcome of the European Heritage Hub pilot project co-funded by the European Union.