Summer time, in fact any time of the year, is just right for a visit to Palanga!  Palanga is a seaside resort famous for its mud baths, mild climate, and beaches that stretch 20 kilometers along the Baltic Sea.

It became a resort at the beginning of the 19th century.  Count Tiškevičius bought the city and the coastal land in 1824.  He helped renovate the port and built a new oak pier from which the ships cast anchor.  After the port was covered by the fast-shifting sand, the pier became a favorite strolling place for beachgoers.  Even now, vacations photos dating from long ago to the present seem to focus on the long pier extending into the sea at dusk.

Of course, we mustn't forget the amber.  Archaeological findings shopw that the earliest settlements date back to the Neolotihic period (4-2 thousand B.C.)  Among the finds, amber pieces mingle.  Through the ages, trade involved these yellow nuggets.  In 1963, the mansion of Count Tiškevičius was converted to the Amber Museum, which chronicles the uses and the art of amber from the Baltic Sea.

BRIDGES Issue 5/2002
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