The Franciscan Church, or the Church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary and Franciscan Abbey in Vilnius to give it its full title, dates from the middle of the 14th century. Currently a beguiling building site of crumbling Gothic and Baroque magnificence, work continues both inside and out to restore it to its original beauty. Amidst the hastily assembled wooden seating, pile of bricks on the sanctuary and scaffolding towers, work is slowly moving forwards. At the time of our last visit, the Chapel of the Virgin Mary, complete with a statue of the lady reputed to have miracle-working powers, was nearing completion, giving some indication of how things will eventually look.
Franciscan Church comments
Add Yours
View in maps.inyourpocket.com
Open:
Mass 17:30 (Lithuanian), 19:00 (Polish), Sun 10:00 (Lithuanian), 11:30 (Polish), 13:00 (Polish).
Address:
Trakų 9-1
Phone:
(+370) 5 261 42 42
My wife and I spent a week in Vilnius about two weeks before Lithuania and a host of other countries joined the EU. I find in my travels a significan fraction of a country's history is somwhow tied closely to the churches. I, therefore, spend an inordinate amount of my tourist time in and around a city's churches. Saint Anne's is beautiful. Walking out of Saint Anne's, I was taken aback by a church that essentially took me to New Mexico and Arizona. The Franciscan Church next to Saint Anne's caught me totally off guard. Yes, it is in somewhat poor repair and, by its very nature, stark, so different from the preponderance of ornate churches throughout Europe. I sat for several hours looking at the rough hewn crucifix and the modest carvings, and remembered the number of times I served mass in churches so similar, in the poorest counties of northern New Mexico. To stumble upon a Franciscan church so far from "home" was at once interesting and very naustalgic.