Vilnius: The city of wanderers. 2nd edition. BRADIS L.

The book of the Lithuanian-Canadian geographer and cultural historian Limonas Bedis tells the history of the multicultural capital of Lithuania from her “Birth in Europe” of the XIV century to the present day. Vilnius as a “geographical personality” and “historical hero” is shown through the eyes of the “strangers” who visited him. Based on numerous sources in different languages, the author traces what cartographic, political and cultural meanings the city was endowed with in different periods of its history.

The capital of the pagan principality through the eyes of Catholic missionaries; Baroque city in the open spaces of mythical Sarmatia through the eyes of European cartographers; The Polish province through the eyes of the famous traveler and naturalist George Forster; the city of the period of the war of 1812 through the eyes of the Viennese doctor Joseph Frank; Vilna, as part of the Russian Empire, through the eyes of Russian classics (Alexander Ostrovsky, Fedor Dostoevsky, Leo Tolstoy); The occupied city during the First World War through the eyes of a German Flanger soldier; The mysterious Jewish Vilna through the eyes of the German writer Alfred Dyublin are just some of the plots that entered the polyphonic narrative of Vilnius. The book is addressed to a wide range of readers.