Kėdainiai - geographical center of Lithuania, part 2
Let’s continue our travel through Kedainiai old town.
Last time we broke our walk on a southern side of Kedainiai old town, near Knypava market square. This was the historic Russian orthodox quarter. Russians began to settle in Kedainiai after 1648 when Jonusas Radvila (protestant himself) issued a decree allowing living them here and built first Orthodox Church. This was result of the influence of his Russian wife Maria from Mogiliov. Unfortunately nor the church, nor majority of the houses didn’t survived to our days. Today you can see several isolated buildings and street network.
Many of the remaining buildings were rebuilt later or even built anew
Further to the south on the former outskirts of town several isolated houses from XIXth century exist. But as you can see around them many soviet era buildings stand.
Most of the buildings around Knypava market square are soviet buildings fro 70s and 80s like this one (it seems that this is tax inspection building):
And several prewar buildings, most characteristic of them this one:
It is difficult to date this building also on Knypava market square:
Deeper behind the houses of Market square I found this post-WWII “masterpiece”
Going further to the west was German quarter called Jonusava established in 1629. This was very independent and rich quarter, they had even own burgomeister. In fact Kedainiai and Jonusava were twin towns at those times. There were only two such cases in Lithuania. Unfortunately German quarter didn’t survive to modern times entirely. Even street network was completely flattened by soviet town planers. The single remnant of German quarter is Lutheran church built in 1629-1640. Tower of church was reconstructed and heightened in 1714. If will look to the tower you will see that tower is significantly wider that towers on Catholic churches - characteristic property of Lutheran churches of that era.
In this church is buried Adam Freitag - one of the best fortification specialists in Europe in the first half of XVIIth century.
and some front view:
Now we turned back northern direction, bypassing again Knypava market square and going further along Josvainiu street. Development here is better remained and resembles better past days
Several houses from this area:
And finally reached this prewar building on the corner with Didzioji (Big) street
But Didzioji street is entirely different story and now we will make only glimpse on it and we will look through the street in the next part.
