The Neman Riviera

Bright, modern apartments in the old town, a short walk from the river path. Self check-in.

A newly renovated hotel in the very centre of town, with its own restaurant (Aikštė) and a reputation locally for a good breakfast.

A relaxed riverside hotel on the banks of the Jūra, part of the small hydroelectric dam complex there, with a restaurant looking out over the water — under five minutes' walk from the town centre.

Sleep inside the grounds of a 400-year-old Renaissance castle, with its restaurant, gardens and five ponds on your doorstep.

A carefully renovated old townhouse near Šilutė's harbour, close to the boat launch for the Curonian Spit.

A century-old former primary school turned guesthouse, restaurant and sauna, minutes from Rambynas hill. There's also an old windmill (malūnas) on the same grounds. Cooking the owners describe as 'how granny used to make it'.

A restored 19th-century schoolhouse in the quiet river town of Smalininkai, once a customs and toll point on the Nemunas.

A well-kept campsite directly on the Nemunas bank, popular with cyclists and campervans, with hot showers and a swimming spot.

A riverbank guesthouse on Rusnė island, in the heart of the Nemunas Delta, with boats and canoes to rent.

A simple, friendly stop close to the Russian border crossing — useful if basing yourself near Rambynas rather than Tauragė.

A restored 19th-century neoclassical manor in Suvalkija with rooms in the guest house on the grounds — you can stay overnight among the original buildings.

A working manor estate with authentic, clean rooms, a vineyard, and its own restaurant (Kuchmeistrai) for traditional Lithuanian food — a detour worth making.

A stylish dining room inside the Tauragė hotel — good for a proper sit-down meal.

The closest Tauragė gets to a big-city restaurant: craft beer on tap and a small attached cinema.

A dependable spot for classic Lithuanian cooking — soups, cepelinai, grilled meats.

Widely regarded as the best pizza in Tauragė, with decent steaks too — expect it to be busy.

A central, popular pizza spot — a straightforward, reliable choice on Vytauto gatvė.

A modern bakery-café on Vytauto gatvė — good coffee and pastries like pistachio kanneliai.

A proper local bakery for šakotis and šakočiai — the spit-roasted 'tree cakes' traditional across Lithuania.

A cosy dairy shop and deli — good for cottage-cheese desserts and picking up local products to take with you.

The local favourite for old-fashioned Lithuanian cooking — big, unfussy portions. Cash only.

Widely considered the best kitchen in Šilutė, attached to a small hotel.

A local favourite in Jurbarkas old town — the duck comes particularly well recommended.

A working lavender farm on the riverbank, with a bistro kitchen run by a Lithuanian–Irish couple — about as close to 'grown right here' as this region gets.

Old-school Lithuania Minor cooking in a century-old schoolhouse — call ahead if visiting outside their normal hours.

A former railway building turned restaurant with a lot of charm and huge portions — the kitchen is the highlight, more than the rooms upstairs.

A cosy countryside homestead with sauna and jacuzzi, close to Rambynas and the Jankus Museum — simple food, kind hosts.

The castle's own dining room — a memorable setting for a meal, even if you're not staying overnight.

A family smokehouse on Rusnė island — the same family runs a small guesthouse next door. Fresh smoked river and lagoon fish most days.

Another well-loved Rusnė smokehouse, often still warm from the smoker when you buy it.

Probably the best food we found along the whole drive out to the Cape — a modern, slightly unexpected take on the menu rather than strictly traditional Lithuanian.

Lithuania's first modern winery — handcrafted organic fruit wines with tastings from the owner.

A winery with an attached restaurant near Jurbarkas, running its wine-making tradition for more than 100 years — an amazing find with some genuinely interesting grape varieties.

An excellent craft meadery (midus) — further afield, around 2 hours east of Tauragė, but a worthwhile detour for anyone serious about mead.

A specialty coffee roastery based on an old manor estate — north-east of this region, but their beans and oat-milk lattes have a loyal following.

A separate branch from the Tauragė original — the traditional pizza and drinks menu here is just as reliable.

Roasts its own beans and delivers on quality — genuinely recommended.

A cute little shop just off the main road through Šilalė — ice cream, homemade gira (a fermented rye drink) and Biržai bread pastries.

A restaurant by the canal in Šilalė town, with a tastefully decorated interior and a genuinely rich menu.

A remote spot with a genuinely great view over the Nemunas — the owners lean into eco-farming and local produce. Not fine dining, more like your grandmother's table: real, warm, unpolished, and good.

Part florist, part café, part restaurant, in the riverside spa town of Birštonas — the newest Bib Gourmand, awarded in 2026. Seasonal, colourful cooking, plants everywhere, and as many locals dropping in for coffee and cake as sitting down to a full meal. Open daily, which makes it unusually easy to fit in.

A small, well-kept park built around a fish ladder on the Viešvilė river — a peaceful stop rather than a destination in itself.

One of Europe's oldest bird-ringing stations (since 1929), at the mouth of the Nemunas. Climb the old lighthouse; watch ringing in season.

A modest tower with a partial view of the Nemunas — honest opinion: only worth it if you're already in the area for Šereitlaukis manor.

A 12-metre tower over the confluence of the Akmena and Jūra rivers — genuinely worth the climb, with a small café at the base.

A striking modern observation tower on a hill well north of the Nemunas, with wide views over open Samogitian countryside. Genuinely remote — the reward is that you will very likely have it entirely to yourself, which is rarely true of a viewpoint this good. The structure is solid enough that it doesn't sway even in a strong wind.

An adventure park with climbing tracks and zip-lines up to 21 metres, on the site of the former Tauragė manor — a good day out with a restaurant on site.

A clean, cool lake worth knowing about on a hot summer day — a proper beach area was still under construction as of our visit.

An ancient hillfort and settlement site overlooking the village, with a marked nature trail and a boulder known locally as the Love Stone.

A sandstone bluff above the Nemunas, sacred to the Balts long before Christianity — legend ties it to the thunder-god Perkūnas. The platform looks out toward Sovetsk (formerly Tilsit), across the river in Russia.

First raised by the Teutonic Order in 1313 as 'Christmemel', captured by Grand Duke Vytenis after a 17-day siege, then rebuilt as a Renaissance manor in 1604–10. Now run by the Vilnius Academy of Arts.

Begun as a timber Teutonic outpost around 1337, later remade as a neo-Gothic manor in the 19th century, and largely reconstructed after damage in both World Wars. Climb the 33.5-metre tower; the grounds hold the ancient Gediminas Oak.

A restored manor with vineyard, restaurant and rooms — one of the better-preserved estates in the wider region.

A smaller manor house south of the Nemunas, currently being brought back to life by two new owners, Petras and Karolis, whose restoration work and genuine warmth as hosts have already built a strong local reputation. It was mid-construction when we visited, so there wasn't much to see yet, but it's worth watching — several visitors have said they're already planning to return once the restoration is further along.

A former manor house associated with horse rearing under East Prussia, close to Rambynas. It's being renovated, and as of early 2026 there genuinely wasn't much here — no signage, and it isn't straightforward to find. Only worth a stop if you're already passing on the dirt track south of Rambynas park, rather than a destination in its own right.

A large neoclassical manor on the southern bank of the Nemunas, with extensive gardens and a fine river view — damaged in the German WWI occupation, later used as a Wehrmacht headquarters and then a field hospital in WWII.

A beautifully atmospheric, still-unrestored manor ruin — a favourite for photography, with a small entry fee to walk the grounds.

The main house burned down during the WWI German occupation, but surviving farm and residential buildings, a park and a small distillery remain — an offbeat, little-visited stop. Old trees still line the approach roads, a hint at how wealthy this place once was.

An elegant, carefully restored manor-villa in the old town of Švėkšna, with the foundations of an even older manor preserved alongside it. Established 1509.

A grand, long-abandoned manor now being brought back from the brink by its current owners, who lead excursions in English on summer weekends.

Where a Prussian general broke ranks with Napoleon. On 30 December 1812, General Yorck agreed neutrality with the Russian army here, tipping the balance against the French retreat from Moscow.

A neo-Romanesque and neoclassical Catholic church from 1903, cruciform in plan with six altars — the town's main landmark church.

The reconstructed press of Martynas Jankus, 'Patriarch of Lithuania Minor', who smuggled Lithuanian-language books past a 19th-century ban and later signed the 1918 Act of Tilsit calling for union with Lithuania. He's buried nearby.

Not a medieval fortress but a governor's palace built after fire levelled the old town in 1836. It has been an asylum, a business college, and — after 1940 — a prison for political dissidents. Now the Tauragė Region Museum.

Jurbarkas had a Jewish community from the 17th century, once numbering over 2,000, with two synagogues on what was Jewish Street. Both were destroyed in 1941. This 2019 memorial marks the site.

A private, passionately curated collection of vintage cars, tractors, bikes and everyday Soviet-era objects — free or nearly free entry.

One camp, two totalitarian regimes. Germany's most northerly WWII prisoner-of-war camp, holding Allied POWs (including some well-known escapees) from 1941 as Stalag Luft VI; after 1944 the Soviets reused it as an internment camp, then a GULAG labour camp, until 1955. There isn't a great deal left to see, and no guided tour on our visit — the recent discovery of mass graves from both the German and Soviet periods only adds to how eerie the place feels. Visits by appointment.

A branch of Buchenwald concentration camp, used to hold Soviet POW officers during the German occupation. Between 10,000 and 20,000 people are believed to have died here from the conditions. There isn't much physically left beyond a memorial, but it's a genuinely sombre place once you understand what happened here — a stark contrast with the otherwise peaceful, quiet countryside around it. Well signposted if you're in the area.

A picturesque, restored manor and its buildings sit on a hill in this small East Prussian-style town — also the home of the region's well-known dairy, Vilkyškių pieninė. Nearby St. Anne's Church is a real historical legacy, carefully kept both inside and out.

A 19th-century grain warehouse (magazinas) built of field boulders and red brick, right by the Kaunas–Jurbarkas road — locals once stored part of their harvest here against famine, and the building also housed a tavern, a hostel and a post-horse exchange point.

A small local-history museum in the historic riverside town of Veliuona, on the Nemunas between Jurbarkas and Kaunas.

A former hillfort with genuinely stunning views over the Nemunas and Dubysa valleys — a long flight of stairs gets you to the top. A second, related mound (Seredžius II) sits nearby at the actual confluence of the two rivers.

An architecturally striking church that stands out clearly against the surrounding countryside.

A good walk along the Jūra river from the Banga hotel toward the Estrada — stairs partway along lead up to the Catholic church, and on the high riverbank you'll pass one of the 'Molotov Line' bunkers, part of the Soviet Union's hurried 1940–41 fortification of its new western border after annexing the Baltic states.

A reconstructed underground bunker used by anti-Soviet partisans (the 'Forest Brothers') during Lithuania's 1944–1949 resistance war. Part of it has since collapsed; restoration is ongoing.

Little known outside Lithuania: a surface-launched Soviet SS-4 (R-12 Dvina) intermediate-range nuclear missile regiment was stationed in the Šilinė/Sakalinė forest here from 1960 until 1988 — five missiles, each carrying a two-megaton warhead roughly 130 times the yield of the Hiroshima bomb, aimed west at NATO targets in Western Europe as part of the Soviet nuclear deterrent. The site, and every other SS-4 base like it, was dismantled under the terms of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, signed by Reagan and Gorbachev in December 1987 — the first agreement to eliminate an entire class of nuclear weapons outright, requiring both sides to destroy every ground-launched missile with a range between 500 and 5,500 km. Unlike the famous Plokštinė base near Plungė, there is no museum here and it isn't signposted as a tourist site — the open launch field itself sits at 55.082743, 22.329377. It's unclear whether visiting is actually permitted; the eastern approach is blocked, though the northern approach isn't. The US declassified its own intelligence on this exact site: search the CIA's FOIA reading room (foia.cia.gov) for 'TAURAGE MRBM COMPLEX' (document CIA-RDP78T04759A000900010071-0) and 'SOVIET CONSTRUCTION ACTIVITIES IN THE TAURAGE AREA' — genuinely fascinating reading on how this was watched from the outside.

Built in 1907, this bridge carried the internal Soviet boundary between the Lithuanian SSR and Kaliningrad for fifty years; since 1991 it has marked the international border between independent Lithuania and Russia, and — since Lithuania joined the EU in 2004 — the edge of the EU too. Given the strained EU–Russia relationship, it is currently closed to vehicles — only foot traffic across is permitted. It remains a working, closely-watched border — keep cameras pointed at the bridge, not the checkpoint.

Operation Barbarossa opened here. German shelling hit Tauragė and Jurbarkas at around 4am on 22 June 1941, and by 10am the defence lines at both towns had been broken and armoured columns were rolling northeast toward Raseiniai. In the days that followed, one Soviet heavy tank cut the German 6th Panzer Division's supply road north of Raseiniai and held Kampfgruppe Raus up for close to twenty-four hours — a German account of the battle counted more than seventy hits on the hull, none of which penetrated. This memorial on Vilniaus gatvė is dedicated to that tank crew, all of whom died. Worth getting the detail right: the tank in the famous stand was a KV-1, not a T-34, though T-34s fought in the same battle and shocked the Germans just as badly — the Wehrmacht had no idea either machine existed until it met them here.

When Lithuania regained independence in 1990 the Soviet monuments came down and were dumped in yards and scrapheaps. A local businessman, Viliumas Malinauskas, asked the state for them and put more than eighty Lenins, Stalins and Lithuanian Party officials on twenty hectares of his own land in the Dzūkija wetlands. Wooden walkways, guard towers and barbed wire deliberately echo a GULAG camp. It has been controversial since it opened in 2001 — some Lithuanians think it trivialises the occupation — and that argument is part of what makes it worth seeing. There is a café serving Soviet-era food and a small zoo, which tells you something about the tone. Around €12 to enter, roughly two hours, and it is 130km southwest of Vilnius — a day out rather than a detour. Open daily year-round, though hours swing hard with the season: 9am to 5pm in November and December, 9am to 10pm from June to August.

The sister site to Sakalinė, and the one that actually got a museum: an underground Soviet R-12 nuclear missile silo complex, hidden in the forest and not spotted by American satellites until 1978. Unlike Sakalinė, this base is fully open to the public, with an audio guide walking you through the underground control rooms and the silos themselves — genuinely one of the best Cold War museum experiences in Europe. A little further from Tauragė than the rest of this guide (about 1.5–2 hours north), but worth the detour if the missile-base story interests you.