Anykščiai is one of those places where Lithuanian nature and culture go hand in hand. Tucked among the forests and hills of Aukštaitija, on the banks of the winding Šventoji river, this small town is famous for its pine forest: the 'Anykščių šilelis' ('The Forest of Anykščiai'). The priest and poet Antanas Baranauskas immortalised it in 1858-1859 in the poem of the same name, one of the founding works of Lithuanian literature. That bond between landscape and language is still very much alive, and it makes Anykščiai a place Lithuanians hold dear.
But Anykščiai isn't just poetry and forest. It's also one of the country's best all-round destinations for active and family travel. Here you'll find the Medžių lajų takas, a spectacular raised walkway that winds through the treetops and ends at a 36-metre lookout tower. There's the Puntukas stone, one of Lithuania's largest glacial erratics, with a relief carved in memory of two aviators, and one of the tallest churches in the country. Add a historic narrow-gauge railway, adventure parks, and miles of cycle paths and rivers to canoe.
This guide takes a practical look at Anykščiai: how to get there from Vilnius or Kaunas, what to see and do (the treetop walkway, the Puntukas stone, the town centre and its museums, the narrow-gauge railway), what tickets cost and how to plan your days. It's ideal for a getaway built around nature, culture and the outdoors, especially with family, and a great introduction to the quiet beauty of Upper Lithuania.
Anykščiai appears in written sources in the 15th century and grew as a small town in the Aukštaitija region, shaped by its forests and the Šventoji river. Its cultural fame is tied to the poet and bishop Antanas Baranauskas, born here in 1835. His poem 'Anykščių šilelis' ('The Forest of Anykščiai') became a classic of Lithuanian literature, a hymn to the country's nature and language at a time when the Tsarist authorities had banned the Latin alphabet. The town is also linked to the writer Jonas Biliūnas, whose memorial, 'Laimės žiburys' (The Light of Happiness), crowns a nearby hill. In the 20th century, through the Soviet era and after independence in 1990, Anykščiai established itself as a destination for nature, literature and active travel, with modern attractions such as the treetop walkway. The full story is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓The geographic centre and Upper Lithuania (Aukštaitija): Kaunas, the sturdy interwar provisional capital now celebrated for its modernist architecture, and the lakes and forests of the country's oldest national park.
Read the history of Kaunas and central Lithuania →If you only have one day, take a guided tour on the first one: it sets up the rest of your trip and saves you a lot of walking. We look ours up on Civitatis: guided in Spanish and booked online with no fuss. They have 8 activities in Vilna. And there are free tours here: you book without paying and tip the guide whatever you think at the end, so trying one costs you nothing. Have a look below: tap any of them to see them all.
They depart from Vilna, 94 km away. If you book from this link we earn a commission and you pay no more.
No exact prices: a scale from $ (budget) to $$$$$ (luxury), with 2-3 options per category.
Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Anykščiai is shaped by the nature around it. It sits in the heart of Aukštaitija, 'Upper Lithuania', the region of highlands, dense forests, gentle hills and a remarkable number of lakes and rivers that covers the north-east of the country. The Šventoji river winds through the town (its name means 'sacred'), and all around it stretch the pine forests that would give Anykščiai its fame and its soul.
Baltic tribes, the ancestors of today's Lithuanians, lived in the region from very early times. In these north-eastern lands, far from the major routes, traditions, pagan beliefs and a strong bond with nature survived for a long time. Forests, stones and rivers held sacred meaning, and many folk legends, like those surrounding the huge Puntukas boulder, have their roots in that pre-Christian world. When Lithuania became Christian, late, at the end of the 14th century, this old nature-based religion did not vanish entirely. Instead, it blended with Catholicism.
Anykščiai first appears as a settlement in written sources in the 15th century. It grew into a small market town, tied to farming, forestry and the river. It was never large or powerful, but its setting, among forests with the sacred river running through it, gave it a character that centuries later would turn it into neither a trading power nor a military one, but something rarer and more lasting: a cultural symbol, the landscape poets chose when they wrote about Lithuania.
Anykščiai's fame came through words. In 1835 Antanas Baranauskas was born here into a peasant family. He would become a priest, a bishop, a mathematician, a linguist and, above all, a poet. As a young man, in 1858-1859, Baranauskas wrote 'Anykščių šilelis' ('The Forest of Anykščiai'). This long poem in Lithuanian describes the beauty of the pine forest of his home town with depth and tenderness, and mourns its destruction by logging. On the surface it is a song to nature. In reality it is much more.
That's because the poem was written at a critical moment. After the 1863 uprising against the Russian Empire, the Tsarist authorities banned printing in Lithuanian with Latin letters, in an attempt to Russify the people and erase their identity. For forty years (1864-1904), publishing in Lithuanian was illegal. Books were printed in secret in neighbouring Prussia and smuggled in by the knygnešiai, the 'book carriers'. Against this backdrop, singing about the forest of Anykščiai in Lithuanian was an act of national affirmation. Baranauskas's poem became proof of the beauty and dignity of the Lithuanian language, and a symbol of cultural resistance.
So 'Anykščių šilelis' became one of the founding works of modern Lithuanian literature, studied by generations of schoolchildren and loved across the country. And Anykščiai, the small town of the forest in the poem, was forever tied to that idea: the quintessential Lithuanian landscape, the place where nature and the national language came together in a poem. The humble log granary where Baranauskas wrote, the Baranausko klėtelė, is preserved today as a house museum.
Anykščiai produced not just one writer but a whole literary constellation. Jonas Biliūnas (1879-1907) was born here at the end of the 19th century. He wrote short stories of great delicacy and social sensitivity and is considered one of the greats of Lithuanian prose, even though tuberculosis cut his life short at 27. Decades after his death, in 1958, a funerary monument was raised in his honour on Liudiškiai hill: 'Laimės žiburys' (The Light of Happiness), a slender 14-metre obelisk named after one of his stories. His remains lie at its foot. A staircase of about a hundred steps leads to the top, with a lovely view over the Šventoji valley.
In the nearby forests, nature and history meet in another unusual monument: the Puntukas boulder (Puntuko akmuo), a colossal granite erratic weighing about 265 tonnes, left behind by glaciers thousands of years ago. Pagan legends surround the boulder, and in 1943 it became a patriotic tribute when the sculptor Bronius Pundzius carved the faces of Steponas Darius and Stasys Girėnas into it.
In July 1933 these two Lithuanian-American aviators pulled off a feat that moved the whole country. In their small plane, the 'Lituanica', they flew non-stop across the Atlantic from New York, heading for Lithuania, on one of the longest transatlantic flights of the time. When they were close to reaching their goal, the plane crashed in a forest in Germany, in circumstances that have never been fully explained, and both men died. Darius and Girėnas became national heroes. Their memory, carved into the old Puntukas boulder, forever linked that feat with the landscape of Anykščiai.
Like the rest of Lithuania, Anykščiai lived through a turbulent 20th century. After long rule by the Russian Empire, the country declared independence in 1918 and had two decades as its own state. During that time the small forest town carried on its quiet life as a farming market town and a place of literary memory. Then the Second World War brought tragedy. The Soviet occupation came in 1940, followed by the Nazi occupation from 1941, when the local Jewish community, which had been an important part of the town's life, was murdered. In 1944 the country was forcibly reincorporated into the Soviet Union.
Under Soviet rule, Anykščiai and the surrounding area went through the forced collectivisation of farming and the deportation of thousands of Lithuanians to Siberia. In the region's forests, the 'forest brothers' (partisans) fought the occupation for years. With its dense forests, Aukštaitija was one of the settings of that long-silenced guerrilla war. At the same time, the regime made use of the cultural prestige of Baranauskas and Biliūnas and developed Anykščiai as a place of literary memory and rest, with museums and holiday homes.
When independence was restored in 1990, Anykščiai entered a new chapter. It remained the place of poetry and forest, but it also reinvented itself as one of the country's most complete destinations for nature and active tourism. The treetop walkway, the first in the Baltic states, opened in 2015 and was a turning point, drawing visitors from all over Lithuania and abroad. Today Anykščiai combines the two sides that make it unique. One is the cultural sanctuary, with Baranauskas's granary and Biliūnas's 'light'. The other is the modern destination for nature, adventure and forest, still true in its own way to the poem that made it famous.
