Hotels in Klaipėda

Klaipėda is Lithuania's third-largest city and its only seaport, strung along the narrow strait where the Curonian Lagoon opens into the Baltic Sea. Founded as Memel by the Teutonic Order in 1252, it spent centuries under Prussian and German rule before joining Lithuania in 1923, and that layered history still shows in its half-timbered warehouses, red-brick fortifications and grid-planned Old Town.

The Old Town sits on the south bank of the Danė River and is easily covered on foot: Theatre Square and the Ännchen von Tharau fountain, the sculpture park, and a cluster of small specialist museums devoted to amber, clocks and blacksmithing. Across the water, a short ferry from the passenger terminal reaches Smiltynė and the northern tip of the Curonian Spit, the UNESCO-listed dune peninsula of pine forest, shifting sand and quiet Baltic beaches that draws most visitors here in the first place.

Klaipėda makes a practical base for the whole Lithuanian coast. Palanga and its airport lie about half an hour north, Nida and the Spit's fishing villages an hour south by road and ferry, and Kaunas is roughly three hours inland. The city peaks in late July during the Sea Festival, when tall ships fill the port, but is calmer and noticeably cheaper on either side of the summer season.