Sat splendidly towards the eastern end of Laisvės, the imposing but currently dishevelled Church of St. Michael the Archangel, known in the local vernacular as Soboras (the Lithuanian rendition of sobor, the Russian word for cathedral) started life in 1893 as a Russian Orthodox cathedral, which explains its classic Neo-Byzantine design. Originally built for tsarist soldiers based in the city, it was handed over to the Lithuanian army at the end of the First World War and with the exception of an incarnation as an art gallery during the Soviet occupation has been a military church all its life.