Vilnius Town Hall

A town hall has stood on this square since Vilnius received Magdeburg rights in 1387, and the present building is the last of many rebuildings. The wooden top of the tower, with its clock, burned in 1749; Johann Christoph Glaubitz was commissioned to rebuild it and the work was finished in 1769. About ten years later the tower began to lean, and when Laurynas Gucevičius was called in to repair it, it collapsed and took part of the hall with it. He was then asked for a complete replacement. Several schemes went to the king and the magistrate; the cheapest and simplest was chosen, and construction ran from 1785 to 1799 on the surviving medieval cellars. What emerged has no tower at all: a compact two-storey block of severe proportion, plain wall surfaces with evenly spaced windows in modest classical surrounds, a heavy modillioned cornice, and a portico of six Doric columns beneath a low pediment. Gucevičius died in 1798 and never saw it finished.