Panemunės pilies tvarkybos raida XX a. − XXI a. pradžioje

The Panemunė castle is a highly valuable monument of 17th-18th century architecture and probably the most authentic residential castle that has survived in Lithuania. The conservation work on the castle has been in progress for almost eight decades. This process has become prolonged due to the complicated nature of the conservation works (research, repair, adaptation, restoration and design), which has raised many questions and offered many solutions. It vividly illustrates the problems of the institutional and methodical development of the entire system of heritage conservation in Lithuania since the middle of the 20th century. The historian Stasys Pinkus and the architect Žibartas Simonavičius conducted a thorough historical and architectural research on the Panemunė castle from the 1950s to the 1970s. They discovered some valuable sources and established three stages in the development of construction and reconstruction (early 17th c., middle and second half of the 17th c., late 18th c.), during which the spatial structure of the castle combining the elements of the Renaissance, Baroque and Classicist styles and the principles of residential planning typical of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was formed. From the 1830s, this residential castle gradually deteriorated and was only occasionally used for auxiliary purposes. The reconstruction works carried out in the 19th century mainly changed the appearance of the western wing, but did not make a crucial impact on the authentic spatial structure of the castle. While carrying out the restoration and readjustment works on the Panemunė castle from 1958 until the late 1980s, the conception of conservation works formed by the researcher of this monument of architecture and the author of restoration and readjustment projects, Simonavičius, was basically followed. [...