Kaunas is today Lithuania’s second largest city and, like Vilnius, it has a long and varied history. 

In 1408, Kaunas became a city with a charter granted by Vytautas the Great. 

In 1441, after the signing of the Hansa agreement, Hanseatic Merchants established an office in Kaunas which was to remain active until 1532.  The wealth brought into the city plus the cultural advances of the European renaissance meant great expansion and prosperity to Kaunas and by the end of the 1500s it had a school and a public hospital.
 
The 17th and 18th centuries, however brought hardship and hostility to Kaunas caused by both political and environmental problems.  The city was attacked by the Russian army in 1655 and in the aftermath of this was to experience two epidemics of bubonic plague in 1657 and 1708.  Later, in 1731 and 1732, great fires brought widespread destruction to Kaunas.  

The city had rallied somewhat by the end of the 18th century but this good fortune was not to last and 1812 saw Napoleon I’s army cross the Nemunas River in Kaunas on their way to Russia wreaking havoc along the way. 
It was the industrial revolution which was to help Kaunas back onto a more prosperous path with engineering achievements such as the building of the Oginsky canal which connected the Nemunas and Dnieper rivers as well as the introduction of the railway linking the Russian Empire with Germany in 1862.

The expansion of Kaunas was interrupted by World War I when it lost its independence until 1919.  Due to the occupation of Vilnius by the Russians that year, the Lithuanian State Council and Cabinet of Ministers moved to Kaunas and the following year it temporarily became the country’s capital when the national parliament gathered there.  The period between the two world wars saw rapid economic and industrial growth to Kaunas with buses appearing on the streets in 1924 and plumbing being installed to most buildings in 1928. 

Again the good times were short lived as World War II brought more devastation to Kaunas and the subsequent Soviet occupation led to oppression of the Lithuanian people.  Since independence was finally achieved in 1991, many monuments and museums have been restored which along side the universities art galleries and theatres make Kaunas a fascinating destination and a vibrant home to its population of around 400,000.