Aukštaitija National Park is the green and blue heart of Lithuania. It's the country's oldest national park: a vast maze of more than a hundred crystal-clear lakes linked by streams, surrounded by thick pine forests, wooden villages frozen in time, and hills offering some of the most beautiful views in the country. Created in 1974, it protects a landscape of nature and traditional culture in the Aukštaitija region, 'the highlands', in the north-east of the country.
It's Lithuania's great nature destination. People come here to kayak or canoe from lake to lake, walk trails through pine woods, climb Ladakalnis Hill to see six lakes at once, discover ethnographic villages with their wooden houses and mills, and learn about unusual traditions like ancient forest beekeeping, which has its own museum in the village of Stripeikiai. Everything moves slowly here, the air is wonderfully clean, and the silence is broken only by water and birds.
This guide covers Aukštaitija National Park with a practical eye: how to get there from Vilnius by train to Ignalina, how to get around its lakes and villages, what to see (Ladakalnis Hill, the Beekeeping Museum, the wooden church of Palūšė, the traditional villages, and lakes Lūšiai, Baluošas and Tauragnas) and how to plan a kayaking or hiking trip. It's an ideal place to switch off, paddle and immerse yourself in Lithuania at its most authentic and natural.
Baltic tribes lived in the Aukštaitija region, the historic cradle of the Lithuanian nation, from prehistoric times. The burial mounds and hill forts (piliakalniai) scattered across the park are evidence of this. For centuries, life revolved around the forests, the lakes and subsistence farming, in wooden villages that kept ancestral traditions alive. One of these was beekeeping in hollowed-out tree trunks, a practice thousands of years old in these forests. In 1974, in the middle of the Soviet era, Lithuania's first national park was created here, originally called the National Park of the Lithuanian SSR, to protect this exceptional landscape of lakes and forests and its ethnographic heritage. After independence in 1990 it was renamed Aukštaitija National Park. Today it preserves protected ethnographic villages, museums and nature that is almost untouched. 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, 91 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.
The Aukštaitija region – 'the highlands' – is, together with Samogitia, one of the historic cradles of the Lithuanian nation. The land the national park protects today has been inhabited since prehistoric times by Baltic tribes, drawn by its many lakes, forests and fertile land. The landscape still holds traces of that thousand-year presence: burial mounds (pilkapiai) and, above all, hillforts (piliakalniai), the mounds where old wooden and earthen fortresses once stood, serving as refuges and centres of power for Baltic communities.
During the Iron Age and the Early Middle Ages, these lands were part of the world of the aukštaičiai, the 'highlanders', one of the Baltic groups that, together with the Samogitians, would give rise to the Lithuanian state. It was in the Aukštaitija region, further east and south, that the core of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania took shape in the 13th century, with figures such as King Mindaugas. The forests and lakes the park covers today were the setting for that early history, still partly wrapped in legend.
Nature shaped every part of life for these communities. The lakes provided fish; the forests gave game, timber, honey and shelter; the hillforts offered protection. That close bond with the land gave rise to traditions that would last for centuries, such as forest beekeeping – keeping bees in hollowed-out tree trunks – and a material and spiritual culture deeply tied to the forest, found in the folklore, rituals and pagan Baltic beliefs that survived for a long time beneath the surface of Christianity.
For centuries, life in the villages of this region followed the slow rhythm of nature. Under the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, then the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and later the Russian Empire after the partitions of the late 18th century, the peasant communities of Aukštaitija lived from subsistence farming, fishing in the countless lakes, raising livestock and carefully working the forest. The villages of log houses, with their barns, wells, carved crosses and watermills, barely changed in appearance over generations.
One of the most distinctive traditions of these forests was forest beekeeping. From the Middle Ages onwards, locals kept bees in hives made from hollowed-out tree trunks – sometimes high up in the pines – and later in carved wooden hives, to get honey and wax, both highly valued goods in the pre-industrial economy. That practice, handed down from parents to children, is what the Ancient Beekeeping Museum in Stripeikiai, inside the park, remembers today: a testament to a thousand-year relationship between people, the forest and bees.
Wooden architecture was another defining feature. Churches, houses and barns were built from logs, with remarkable carpentry skill. The wooden Church of St Joseph in Palūšė, built around 1750 with its free-standing bell tower, is one of the oldest and most beautiful examples of this sacred wooden tradition, so typical of north-eastern Lithuania. All this ethnographic heritage – villages, churches, mills, crafts – is now an essential part of what the park protects, just as important as its nature.
The turning point in the modern history of this land came in 1974, in the middle of the Soviet era, when the first national park in all of Lithuania was created here. Originally founded as the National Park of the Lithuanian SSR (Lietuvos TSR nacionalinis parkas), its aim was to protect an exceptional landscape of lakes, forests and ethnographic heritage in the Aukštaitija region, recognising its unique natural and cultural value within the Soviet republic.
In a way, creating the park was an achievement of the budding conservation and nature-awareness movement that existed even within the Soviet system. An area of more than four hundred square kilometres was marked out, with its hundred-plus lakes, its forests – largely pine – and its traditional villages, and protection measures were put in place for both the ecosystems and the built heritage. Even then, preserving the ethnographic villages and traditions such as beekeeping was considered important.
That decision saved from decline and uncontrolled development a corner that is now one of Lithuania's great natural treasures. The fact that the country's first national park was born right here, in the 'highlands' of lakes and forests, says a lot about the place this landscape holds in Lithuanian identity and imagination. During the Soviet years, the park was also a destination for organised excursions, camps and nature tourism.
When Lithuania regained its independence in 1990, the park changed its name and political framework, becoming Aukštaitija National Park, and joined the protected-area system of the free country. Independence also brought new challenges and opportunities: opening up to international tourism, upgrading visitor services and, at the same time, the need to balance that tourism with protecting a fragile ecosystem and an irreplaceable ethnographic heritage.
The park set up its visitor centre in Palūšė, marked hiking, kayaking and cycling routes, and promoted its highlights: the Ladakalnis viewpoint, with its view of six lakes; the Ancient Beekeeping Museum in Stripeikiai; protected ethnographic villages such as Šuminai and Salos II; and remarkable lakes such as Tauragnas, the deepest in the country, or Baluošas, with its island and its lake within a lake. The network of connected lakes has made Aukštaitija one of the best kayaking and canoeing destinations in the Baltic region.
Today, Aukštaitija National Park is the flagship of Lithuanian nature: a place where water, forest and rural culture live side by side almost as they did centuries ago. For travellers, exploring it – paddling from lake to lake, walking through pine woods, climbing Ladakalnis or discovering life in the wooden villages – means diving into the deepest, most authentic Lithuania, the one that gave birth to the nation in the 'highlands' of lakes and forests, and that the country chose to protect, for the first time, in 1974.
