Šilalė District Municipality covers 1,188 km² of inland western Lithuania — one town, seven smaller towns and more than 400 villages spread across Tauragė County, with about 22,000 residents in total. This is the heart of Samogitia, or Žemaitija, a region that has kept its own dialect, cooking and long-standing reputation for stubbornness.

The landscape carries the interest: low wooded ridges, farmland cut by the Lokysta and Jūra rivers, and a string of hillforts left from the medieval wars against the Teutonic Order. Medvėgalis, at roughly 234 metres one of the highest points in Samogitia, is the best known, with Bilionys and Lopaičiai close behind, and the lakes and forests of Varniai Regional Park reach into the district's northern edge.

Šilalė town is the administrative centre and the main place to stay, while Kvėdarna, Laukuva, Kaltinėnai, Pajūris and Upyna are the larger villages, each with a church and, at Upyna, an ethnographic and technology museum worth the detour. Bijotai holds the Dionizas Poška estate and its hollowed-oak Baublys, often called Lithuania's first museum. A car is essential here — buses are infrequent and accommodation runs to guesthouses and rural homesteads rather than hotels.