# Berlin Wall in Vilnius, Lithuania

> One site in Where Is The Wall, an independent, source-linked atlas of where the Berlin Wall went after 1989. Cite the page and, for any specific claim, the source it names. How the evidence levels are graded: https://whereisthewall.com/methodology. Every site: https://whereisthewall.com/llms.txt.

- Page: https://whereisthewall.com/wall/lithuania/vilnius/berlin-wall-vilnius-f139
- Place: Europos Parkas, Joneikiškės, near Vilnius, Lithuania
- Classification: Memorial; can it be seen today: On display (On display); evidence: Documented
- Position: 54.830191534149, 25.354032218331
- Listed by the Federal Foundation as #139.

A segment given to Vilnius in its year as European Capital of Culture, installed in a sculpture park built around a French calculation of the centre of Europe.

Where is the middle of Europe? The answer has moved around — Germany, Poland, Ukraine, the Czech lands have all had a monument to it — and in 1989 researchers at France's national geographic institute measured the continent again and put it at the Lithuanian village of Purnuškės, north of Vilnius. The spot was marked with a wind rose laid into the ground and a granite column with a ring of gold stars.

In 1991 the Lithuanian sculptor Gintaras Karosas set about giving the calculation artistic weight, founding a sculpture park nearby: Europos Parkas, more than fifty hectares holding over a hundred works by artists from around the world, among them Magdalena Abakanowicz, Dennis Oppenheim and Sol LeWitt, invited to work on the theme of crossing old borders. It was the first non-state museum in Lithuania after the end of the Soviet Union, which is its own kind of monument.

For the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Wall, the German embassy and the Goethe-Institut gave the city of Vilnius a segment. Vilnius was European Capital of Culture that year. The piece was set up in the park on 9 November 2009 and inaugurated with the German ambassador Hans-Peter Annen and the deputy mayor of Vilnius, Vidmantas Martikonis, present.

Provenance: A gift from the German embassy and the Goethe-Institut Lithuania to the city of Vilnius for the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Wall, installed on 9 November 2009.

Sources:

- [Federal Foundation — Berlin Wall worldwide, site entry](https://www.berliner-mauer-weltweit.eu/bm_spots/berliner-mauer-in-vilnius/): The 1989 French calculation placing the centre of Europe at Purnuškės and its marking, Gintaras Karosas's founding of Europos Parkas in 1991 and its scale and artists, its status as the first non-state museum in post-Soviet Lithuania, and the segment given by the German embassy and Goethe-Institut and installed on 9 November 2009 with Hans-Peter Annen and Vidmantas Martikonis present.
- [A Fragment of the Berlin Wall in Europos Parkas](https://www.europosparkas.lt/Naujienos/Berlin_wall.html): The park's own account: for the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Wall the German Embassy and the Goethe-Institut in Lithuania gave the city of Vilnius a fragment of the Wall, mounted and opened in Europos Parkas on 9 November 2009 with the German ambassador Hans-Peter Annen and the deputy mayor Vidmantas Martikonis present.
- [Federal Foundation — Berlin Wall worldwide](https://www.berliner-mauer-weltweit.eu/bm_spots/berliner-mauer-in-vilnius/): The source lists this place as a Berlin Wall location. Coordinates, where supplied, are source-reported and may represent a general area. This is not independent verification of authenticity, current presence, or public access.