Upper Castle (Vilnius)

General view of Castle Hill: on the left are the ruins of the citadel, on the right is the Gediminas Tower

The ruins of the citadel of Vytautas on Castle Hill

Upper Vilnius Castle (lit. Aukštutinė pilis ; floor. Zamek Górny ) is one of the Vilnius castles that stood at the confluence of Vilia and Vilnius on the 48-meter high Castle Hill , also called Gediminas Mountain. Fragments of the main citadel , the foundation of the southern tower and the two lower tiers of the western tower - the so-called. Gediminas' towers (now an observation deck and museum).

The exact time of the construction of the fortress on the mountain is unknown. It is only known for certain that already in the first half of the XIV century there were stone fortifications there. During the Teutonic-Lithuanian wars, the castle withstood the numerous sieges of the Teutonic knights (in 1365, 1375, 1377, 1383, 1390, 1392, 1394, 1402, of which the penultimate lasted three weeks) ^[1] .

In the years 1419-1422. The upper castle was rebuilt at the direction of Grand Duke Vytautas in line with brick Gothic . The fortress, designed, obviously, under the influence of order castles (Vytautas spent four years in the lands of the Teutonic Knights ), had three towers round in cross section, covered with green tiles. The length of the walls was 320 meters; The main reception hall was 10 by 30 meters.

In the XVI century, like most Lithuanian royal fortresses, the Upper Castle ceased to be regularly repaired and began to deteriorate. It was used as a prison for the gentry. In 1655, for the first time ^[2] in history, it was taken by the enemy army - the Russian army under the leadership of Prince D. E. Myshetsky . The Russian garrison ruled in the castle for six years.

Castle Hill was open to civilians after the liquidation of the fortress and the withdrawal of the garrison from its territory in 1878. In the mid 1890s. a spiral path was laid to simplify the climb. In the 1930s Gediminas' tower was built on by the Polish authorities and acquired a modern look.

To mark the 750th anniversary of the coronation of Mindovg , a cable car was built in 2003 to access the tower. Despite periodic landslides , in 2013-16. to improve the visibility of castle buildings on the mountain, all trees were cut down ^[3] . There were fears in the press that the Gediminas’s tower might slide down ^[4] . As of 2019, construction equipment continues to work at the top.