Europos Parkas

Europos Park, a little ways outside Vilnius, Lithuania, is a park-museum hybrid located at the exact geographic center of the European continent. Founded in 1991 by then-23-year-old Lithuanian sculptor Gintaras Karosas, the park stretches for 55 hectares, covered in pieces of modern art of all shapes and sizes.

Scattered and strewn across the park are over 90 works hailing from 27 countries. Some of the most well-known are LNK Infotree, which includes 3,000 television sets, and Monument of the Centre of Europe, which is a series of plaques that indicate the distances of a number of European capital cities from the park, both by Karosas himself.

You can rent bikes on the grounds, or simply meander around the sculptures, made of materials ranging from wood to stone to metal to other materials. There are several natural springs, and in springtime, the park comes alive with flower blossoms.

In the middle of the park you can visit Liubavas, one of the oldest estates in Lithuania, which was converted into a museum of history and culture in 2011. Part of the museum is dedicated to watermills, an important piece of technology in the region’s industrial history and heritage. The Liubavas Manor has the only mill in the entire country with completely restored equipment; it can demonstrate the processing of grain, wood, and metal as well as power generation. There’s even a functioning 100-year-old water turbine.