Hotels near Dionizas Poška Baubliai Museum

In 1812 the writer and antiquarian Dionizas Poška (1764-1830) cut the rotten heart out of a dead oak on his Baubliai estate, roofed it, fitted a door and windows, and filled it with his collection. That makes the Baubliai the oldest museum in Lithuania and very probably the smallest one you will ever pay to enter. The oak was reckoned to be around a thousand years old when it died, and a second trunk, nicknamed Baublys's brother, was hauled alongside it in 1824.

Inside the first trunk Poška kept archaeological finds, coins, portraits, carved figures of old Baltic gods and more than 200 books. Both trunks were braced with iron bands and sheltered under wooden roofs by 1930, then conserved again from 1956, which is why they are still upright. The €2 adult ticket, €1 for students and pensioners in 2026, also covers the manor grounds, the restored water mill and the Norbertas Paškevičius park planted around 1825; a guided tour adds €3 for up to ten people or €5 for a group of ten to twenty. The site is a branch of the Šilalė Vladas Statkevičius Museum and by far the busiest of them, with about 14,000 visitors in 2024.

Pro Tip: The museum keeps office hours - 08:00 to 17:00 Monday to Thursday, 08:00 to 15:45 on Friday, closed at weekends and an hour early on the eve of a public holiday - so Bijotai belongs in a midweek plan. Groups arriving outside those hours can sometimes be let in by calling +370 614 56223 a day ahead.