Hotels near Upyna Folk Crafts Museum

The Upyna folk crafts museum, now officially the Upyna Ethnographic Museum (Upynos etnografijos muziejus), packs about 3,500 objects into two floors of a former rectory barn beside the village church. It was built up by Klemensas Lovčikas, a local teacher and historian who spent decades collecting from farms around Upyna, and the range runs from stone and iron axes and bronze ornaments through to the complete workbenches of a carpenter, a blacksmith and a weaver.

Old carved wooden crosses are fixed along the outside walls, and the yard holds 19th and 20th century farm machinery, from horse-drawn ploughs to threshers, left where visitors can walk around them. Next door, the Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary of about 1835 is where the pilot Stasys Girėnas was baptised, which makes Upyna a natural pairing with his birthplace museum 5 km away in Vytogala. Entry is €0.50 for adults and €0.30 reduced, and the hours are short: 11:30 to 15:30 Tuesday to Friday, 10:00 to 14:00 on Saturday, closed Sunday and Monday. Ring +370 697 42967 before you drive out, because this is the least visited museum in the district and the keeper is not always on site.

Pro Tip: The upper floor is unheated and dim, so visit between May and September if you want to read the labels. Ask the keeper about the weaving loom rather than the axes; the textile section is where the local collecting was strongest.