Medininkai Castle
medieval castle in Vilnius district, Lithuania
Medininkai Castle (Lithuanian: Medininkų pilis), a medieval castle in Vilnius district, eastern Lithuania. Castle was built in the first half of the 14th century. The defensive perimeter of the castle was 6.5 ha; it is the largest enclosure type castle in Lithuania, and one of the largest castles in Central and North-Eastern Europe.
Architecture
It was built on plain ground and was designed for flank defence. The rectangular castle's yard covered approximately 1.8 hectares and was protected by walls 15 metres high and 2 metres thick. The castle had 4 gates and towers. The main tower (donjon), about 30 metres high, was used for residential quarters. The walls and towers of the shell structure are made of field stones and bricks in the Baltic brick bonding method. The castle's structure is similar to that of the castles of Lida, Kreva and Kaunas.
History
The origins of Medininkai Castle date back to 1311 as mentioned in the Chronicon terrae Prussiae chronicle.
The public source identifies “Medininkai Castle” as medieval castle in Vilnius district, Lithuania. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Medininkai, Castle and medieval.
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Maps, plans, fabric surveys and administrative records can establish how the site’s name, extent and function changed over time. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 21, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2652794. Authority coordinates are 54.539, 25.650. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1311.
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This entry incorporates text from “Medininkai Castle” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.