Somewhere around eight, kids stop wanting soft play and start asking for the harder climbing wall, the escape room, the laser tag rematch. These are the places and family events we've found for that age: active spots, museums with enough story to hold a ten-year-old, and shows pitched above the toddler crowd.
Logic Games runs two separate escape rooms. Geimerio lobis is a puzzle room built for kids and families: a team searches the room, solves riddles and opens locks to reach a treasure chest holding small sweets. The room is never locked, stays well lit and has no jump scares.
Zodiakas is a locked room for teens and adults, built around the Zodiac killer story.
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's book as a Lithuanian musical, written and directed by composer Jonas Sakalauskas. A live orchestra and choir play the score while aerial acrobats, projections and lighting fill the arena stage.
It is performed in Lithuanian, so kids who know the story will follow it best. Younger kids get the colorful sets and projections; older kids and adults get the story.
A well-known fairy tale told with puppets and objects: a witch stepmother turns her stepsons into birds, and their sister takes a long, hard road to save them. The staging mixes puppetry with clowning and street-theater techniques.
The creators frame it around hard questions, like living in a threatening world, alongside courage, patience and looking after family. It suits kids ready for a story with real danger in it.
The Ukrainian Classical Ballet brings Tchaikovsky's Christmas ballet to Vilnius for the first time. Marie gets a wooden toy soldier from her uncle Drosselmeyer, and at night he comes alive, fights an army of mice and travels with her to a land of sweets.
One of the world's most performed ballets, it suits kids who can sit through two acts. Reading the story beforehand helps younger ones follow along.
Lazertronas is a laser tag arena: teams play in a darkened hall with soft inflatable obstacles, smoke and light effects. An instructor explains the gear and rules before rounds of about 10 to 15 minutes. Groups book the whole arena, mostly for birthdays and class outings, and can use a lounge room during their slot and for 30 minutes after, at no extra cost.
Castellan's House is the newest branch of the National Museum of Lithuania, and it tells the country's story through ideas and people rather than cases of artifacts. Six rooms each take one theme: creativity, beliefs, struggles, fractures, global links and faces.
The building looks like an old Gothic or Renaissance townhouse, set back from the street with a quiet courtyard. It suits school-age kids with some curiosity about history.
An interactive exhibition run by Lithuania's State Service for Protected Areas, built as a way into the country's national and regional parks and reserves. The main hall is styled as a meadow, with grasses, birds and grasshoppers all around and clouds overhead.
Kids can listen to bird calls, handle real specimens, try the quiz table and touch screens, and watch nature films in a bat-themed cinema room.
The Bank of Lithuania's Money Museum tells the story of money across five halls, about 300 square meters in all. It starts with the oldest forms of exchange, such as grain, fur and amber (long traded in this region), and ends with digital currency.
The exhibits are interactive, and audio guides come in several languages, so kids who don't read Lithuanian can still follow along.
Lumina is an evening light trail through the Vilnius University Botanical Garden in Kairėnai, with more than 200 light installations. This year's theme is cinema: kids meet Charlie Chaplin, Marilyn Monroe, James Bond, Star Wars characters and Mr. Bean, and pass scenes from Cinderella and The Jungle Book, with music and sound effects made for the park.
Kids can also play a phone game and win prizes.
Careful, Magic! is a new show from children's illusionist Alan Gladkov. When the lights go down, the tricks begin: objects appear out of nowhere, with plenty of laughs and surprises along the way.
It plays to kids and adults at once. Some kids will believe every trick, and some parents will try to work out how it's done.
PEW PEW VR is a free-roam virtual reality arena. Players wear headsets and move through a 120 m² space in teams of up to three, hiding behind virtual cover across six game rooms.
The fantasy version drops kids into pirate, medieval and cyberpunk worlds, a co-op mode with some horror elements pits the team against attackers and a boss, and the military version is a realistic shooter with weapon recoil.
An indoor climbing gym with a bouldering area over thick crash mats and high walls climbed on a rope with full safety gear. Staff show first-timers around and explain how the routes are marked, and shoes and harnesses can be rented.
Kids' classes mix climbing games with technique, some taught in English, and themed birthday parties come with a host. A café area lets parents sit and watch.
Keistuoliai started in 1989, when three music conservatory students and their lecturer set up the first independent theater of its kind in Lithuania. It still plays in the Press House (Spaudos rūmai), a Soviet-era tower.
Weekend daytime shows are made for children, such as a play about the world of childhood built around kids' own sayings. Evening plays and concerts are for teens and adults.
The museum fills the Small Radziwiłł Palace, a 17th-century building in the Old Town whose wing held the Vilnius City Theatre from 1796. The collection covers Lithuanian stage, music and film: costumes, set designs and models, posters, musical instruments, and film cameras made between the 1930s and 1970s. Exhibitions rotate. Workshops for kids cover animation, sound effects for film and set design.
The Treasury of Vilnius Cathedral fills the Church of St. Michael the Archangel and the former Bernardine Convent beside it. Golden chalices and monstrances from the 14th century, set with pearls and gemstones, sit next to richly patterned church textiles.
The whole treasury was hidden before World War II and stayed missing until 1985. Best for school-age kids with patience for display cases.
MO Museum holds more than 6,000 works of Lithuanian modern and contemporary art from the 1950s to today: painting, photography, video, sculpture and installation. The Studio Libeskind building stands on the site of the old Lietuva Cinema, with a sculpture garden and terrace beside it that are always open.
Family Sundays bring theater games and shows for babies and toddlers, plus workshops for older kids inside the main exhibition.
The bastion is a 16th-century piece of the old city wall: a tower, a horseshoe-shaped artillery platform, and a tunnel joining them. Inside, the exhibition shows how the city defended itself, from early grenades and mortars to 17th- and 18th-century cannons. Kids can spot the winged hussars and hear the legend of the Basilisk, said to have lived in a cave in the bastion hill.
House of Histories is the newest branch of the National Museum of Lithuania, opened in 2021 in an 18th-century building. A large exhibition fills the ground floor and a smaller one sits upstairs, and each comes with workshops, both live and online.
The current major show traces Lithuanian high tech, from lasers and biotechnology to space technology and robotics.
The Old Arsenal holds the National Museum of Lithuania's archaeology collection, a 12,000-year walk from the first people after the ice melted to the Baltic tribes of the Iron Age.
The ground floor has Stone Age tools and weapons and replicas of seven key finds. Upstairs covers the 1st to 13th centuries: farming, metalwork, weapons and ceramics.
The last tower of Vilnius's medieval Upper Castle, on top of Gediminas Hill. Inside, narrow steps climb past castle models, armor, Baltic jewelry and an interactive timeline where kids can picture a Crusader attack. The observation deck looks out over the red roofs and church towers of the Old Town.
Legend says Grand Duke Gediminas dreamed of an iron wolf howling on this hill and founded the city here.
The residence of Lithuania's grand dukes, gone from the mid-1600s and rebuilt this century, is now a national museum. Four routes run through it: surviving castle walls and archaeological finds, furnished Renaissance and Baroque state rooms, weapons and palace kitchen displays, and temporary exhibitions.
The state rooms route climbs an observation tower with views over the city. Outside are a Renaissance garden and bas-reliefs.
Vilnius Ice Rink (Vilniaus ledas) is the open-air Christmas skating rink set up in Town Hall Square, in the heart of the Old Town. Kids skate in timed sessions under the open sky.
Best for kids who have skated before, or who are happy holding a grown-up's hand on the ice.
One night a year, museums across Vilnius open their doors for free. Inside there are exhibits, workshops, stories and educational events, and more of the program happens throughout the city.
It suits school-age kids who like exploring museums and families happy to make an evening of it. Toddlers who fade at bedtime may find it a stretch.
Giliuko laboratorija is a hands-on science lab from the education company Edugilė, stocked with test tubes, flasks and materials for kids to run their own experiments. Families book it for science birthday parties, where kids work with dry ice, test polymers and build robots, then have cake and games in their own party space.
The same team runs STEAM clubs for primary-school kids and one-off workshops.
A LEGO creativity center where kids learn science, engineering and coding by building. Each weekly class opens with a short talk about the day's model, then kids build it in pairs from Bricks4Kidz's own designs (not sold in toy stores) and finish with free play.
The youngest come with a parent and build with DUPLO. The center also runs holiday camps and themed LEGO birthday parties.
Šeškinės ozas is a 1,160-meter ridge, 3 to 18 meters high, left by glacier meltwater some 16,000 to 18,000 years ago. Now a protected natural monument, it has walking trails and information boards along its winding crest, and a small pond, Lake Šeškiukas, below it. Kids can climb the high points for views over the city and look for squirrels and hedgehogs in the nearby woods.
A white granite pillar topped with a crown of stars marks the spot French geographers fixed as the center of Europe in 1989. Sculptor Gediminas Jokūbonis built the pillar in 2004, beside the marker stone unveiled in 1997.
The area around it has been a protected reserve since 1992, taking in Lake Girija, the Bernotai Mound, a hillside and the neighboring forest.
The Old Town's main square opens in front of the neo-classical cathedral, with a 57-meter bell tower standing apart from it and the Gediminas monument nearby.
Kids can hunt for the stebuklas (miracle) stone: local legend says step on it, turn around three times, and a wish comes true. Red granite in the paving traces the old Lower Castle fortifications. Winter brings the city's tallest Christmas tree.
A forest rope park with six harness courses strung between the trees. Yellow and Orange are built for younger kids, while Green, Blue, Red and Gray climb higher for teens and adults. Instructors run the courses, and a parent can go along with a younger child.
Three forest pavilions are rented out for birthday parties, and orienteering games run for groups.
A playground and climbing area in the Business Garden office park, on the edge of the Lazdynai forest. The centerpiece is a giant green praying mantis climbing frame. Beside it, BONOBO runs a paid outdoor climbing wall on the parking building, with a 10 m beginner wall and routes up to 22 m.
Between the office buildings, a garden of almost 40,000 plants has paths and leisure spots.
Pelesos Square is a renovated green slope between Pelesos and Liepkalnio streets, about 600 m from the railway station. It has two playgrounds for different ages, and the one for older kids is set into the hillside around an 11 m metal slide.
Sports areas, a lookout point, a rain garden, benches, a drinking fountain and a public toilet fill out the rest of the square.
A 29-hectare pine and birch wood on the edge of Karoliniškės and Lazdynai, near the TV tower. Paved, lit paths pass wooden sculptures of witches, mythical creatures and fairytale scenes set up in 1987, plus a playground and a gazebo.
After dark, 10 Vilnius legends glow on the paths and treetops, among them the Iron Wolf, the Basilisk and Saint Casimir. Squirrels and woodpeckers are common in the woods.
Forum Sports Club is a members' club at Forum Palace whose pool hall has a 25 m three-lane pool with cascades and a separate kids' pool. Single-visit passes open it to non-members too.
Around the pool are saunas, Turkish and infrared baths and Jacuzzis, and the club also runs a supervised kids' club, a table tennis area and an outdoor basketball terrace.
Molinė Virtuvė is a ceramics studio where parents and kids sit at shared tables and model clay together, with the team helping at every step. Kids shape bowls, cups or anything they like, then decorate them with colored underglaze paints or a marbling technique.
No experience is needed. The studio dries, fires and glazes every piece and packs it safely for you to take home.
Megazone is a laser tag arena with a two-level maze of about 700 square meters, sound and light effects, and room for up to 32 players. Players wear vests with sensors and use laser guns that leave no bruises, unlike paintball. Each booking is private to the group, so it suits a class birthday or a family outing. Games run in 10-minute rounds after a short safety briefing.
ACTION! by Apollo is a games center inside the Ozas shopping mall, with bowling lanes, a space-themed laser tag maze, a Hologate virtual reality arena and a BLITZ VR simulator. Billiards, darts, table curling and karaoke round it out.
School-age kids and teens get the most from bowling and laser tag. There is little here for toddlers.
The main branch of the city's public library network. Besides the book stacks, it has a Creativity Space with a 3D printer, smart LEGO kits, Micro:bit boards and eight computers, where staff help kids and adults try coding and 3D modeling.
The Music and Art Reading Room lends CDs, vinyl and films, and has a piano that visitors can play.
This puppet theater has staged shows since 1958 and plays in the Oginskiai Palace on Arklių Street. The children's repertoire mixes puppet, shadow and object theater, from Pinocchio, Cinderella and The Snow Queen to new Lithuanian plays.
In the cellar, the Living Puppet Museum shows puppets, masks and set pieces made in the theater's own workshops in the same building, with tours led by professional puppeteers.
The National Gallery of Art shows Lithuanian painting, sculpture, prints, photography, installations and video from the 20th and 21st centuries, drawn from a collection of more than 46,000 works. A permanent display of the collection runs alongside changing exhibitions.
The education center runs guided tours, hands-on workshops and summer camps for children and families. The building is set up for wheelchairs and strollers.
A small museum in a baroque Old Town house, devoted to 50-million-year-old Baltic amber. Kids can hunt for insects trapped in the resin (a mosquito, a grasshopper leg), find amber in white, green and even blue, and see a 3-kilogram piece.
Stairs lead down to a cellar with 15th-century kilns and a patch of street paved 500 years ago. Upstairs is an amber jewelry gallery and shop.
The Museum of Illusions fills 600 m² of a historic building on Vokiečių Street with hands-on exhibits that mix optics, physics and art: optical illusions, installations, gravity and light experiments, and historical illusions.
Exhibits are interactive, photos are allowed everywhere, and guides on the floor explain how each trick works. Curious school-age kids who like asking why get the most out of it.
The first museum in Lithuania devoted to LEGO, built from a private collection of more than 2,000 modern sets. Themed zones cover LEGO City, a medieval village, pirates and Vikings, the Wild West, Minecraft, dinosaurs and space, plus a giant minifigure wall.
Exhibits are look-only, but the construction wall lets kids build and add to a shared piece. Trains and lights run on a short program every hour.
Vilnius's Christmas Run is one of Lithuania's oldest running events, and the 2025 edition was its 50th. Thousands of runners, many in Christmas costumes, follow a route through the Old Town.
The schedule was moved later so runners go after dark, and the youngest kids get an Elves' Run of their own. It suits families after a festive outing that gets everyone moving.
Vilnius Light Festival turns the Old Town into a walk of light installations, digital art and moving light on the buildings. Families follow the installations through streets, squares and courtyards, including undiscovered places in the Old Town.
It suits kids who are happy to walk outdoors in winter. Come for a few installations or make a longer loop.
The Marsiečiai Children's Run is the kids' race of the Swedbank Vilnius Marathon: a 200 m dash from Cathedral Square in the Old Town, with kids starting in age groups. Each runner wears a bib with a timing chip, and results go up on the race website.
It suits kids who want to race on marathon day. The youngest can have a parent run beside them.
The event studio of cookbook author Beata Nicholson's Beatos virtuvė: a 130 m² kitchen with sofas for the grown-ups, booked privately for birthdays and christenings. Kids bake their own pizzas with a baker from Jurgis ir Drakonas, decorate fairy cupcakes or play ice cream shop, and older kids can take on a two-course chef challenge. A few times a year it also runs four- and five-day kids' cooking camps.
Džiaugsmo ratas is a small art studio founded in 2009 by artist and art therapist Elytė Krasauskaitė. Kids paint, draw and try mixed media in groups of up to 10, and ceramics classes teach hand-building with clay, with pieces fired and glazed to take home. Teens can take a more serious academic drawing course. All materials are supplied, and the studio also runs creative birthday parties.
Ribiškės is a range of hills in Pavilniai Regional Park, shaped by a retreating glacier into gullies, small streams and a mix of shady spruce forest, open meadows and wide viewpoints.
Walking routes of 3 or 6 km climb and drop through it, past a few preserved rural huts and the Kaukysa rivulet. In winter the slopes are open to anyone on skis.
A small family-run alpaca farm in the village of Raudoniškės, between Vilnius and Trakai. The owners lead each visit themselves: a short talk about alpaca wool, temperament and how the herd is raised, then time to feed and stroke the animals. Groups are kept small.
A gazebo on the farm suits a family picnic, and guided walks with an alpaca are also offered.
Užupis is the smallest district of Vilnius, a hilly artists' quarter across the Vilnelė River from the Old Town that declared itself an independent republic, half as a joke, in 1997.
Kids can find the trumpet-blowing Angel of Užupis in the main square, ride the Swing of Destiny under the Užupis Bridge, look for the Užupis Mermaid by the river, and wander the Užupis Art Incubator's changing open-air sculptures.
A treetop rope park on the bank of the Neris, with six courses of rising difficulty and more than 60 obstacles. Younger kids get their own routes with nets, a playground and a trampoline.
Taller climbers can ride the 401 m zip line across the river or take the Elephant Flight, a 16 m free-fall jump. Every climber follows a safety briefing first.
Lithuania's largest botanical garden has its main 191-hectare site on a former manor estate in Kairėnai, with forest, meadows, streams and ponds. Kids can walk the Japanese Garden, see some 600 lilac bushes on Lilac Hill, and climb through the award-winning Green Building to its observation terrace, past a display of spiny plants. In snowy winters, marked tracks open for cross-country skiing and sledging.
Pūčkoriai Exposure is the tallest exposed cliff in Lithuania: 65 meters high and 260 meters wide, above the Vilnia River in Pavilniai Regional Park. A trail with wide stairs, wooden walkways and terraces passes both the top and the bottom, so kids can look up at the cliff and down from it.
Old Polish military trenches and a concrete bunker still sit at the site.
A protected stretch of the Vilnia River valley, shaped by the last glaciers. A history trail follows the river from the Pūčkoriai Dam, near the Pūčkoriai Exposure, the highest outcrop in Lithuania, with a sundial on the bank beside it.
The Belmontas waterfalls run by an old water mill site. Kids can look for the ponds of a 16th-century cannon foundry and 20th-century bunkers, or walk the Ribiškių Labyrinth.
Montis Magia Pikas is a full-service climbing gym run by the Montis Magia climbing club, with about 1,187 square meters of wall. Tall rope walls take up most of the hall, and a separate bouldering area has lower walls climbed without a rope.
Training boards cover stronger climbers. The club also runs a climbing school whose instructors teach rope technique and mountain skills.
BONOBO is a climbing gym with more than 100 bouldering problems and a 10-meter lead wall fitted with four auto-belays. A team of route setters changes the problems every week, so repeat visits stay fresh.
There's also an adjustable Kilter Board, a separate training area, and a bar with coffee, drinks and snacks where parents can sit while kids climb.
MaryMaris is an indoor play park in the Akropolis mall, built around a multi-level air maze with tube slides, nets and obstacles. Around it sit a trampoline complex, a ball pit, a Volcano to climb and slide down, a free fall tower, a ninja obstacle course and sports machines.
A family restaurant and party cabins for birthdays are on site.
SkyPark fills the third floor of the Vilnius Outlet mall with a trampoline zone, trampoline dodgeball, and regular and interactive basketball hoops. Younger kids head for an 11-meter, five-level climbing playground with slides, an obstacle course and soft-ball cannons.
Between jumps there are bumper cars, mini bowling, table football, table tennis and touch-screen games. Craft Pizza, a pizzeria on site, serves thick-crust American pizza.
Lithuania's national library fills a 1963 building on Gediminas Avenue, the first in the Baltics designed and built as a library, which reopened after a reconstruction that ended in 2016.
Beyond the reading rooms and the skylit atrium lined with books, it has a children's activity center called Žaisloteka (Toytheque), a makerspace called PATS SAU, a media makerspace, a cinema room and a music room.
The State Knowledge Centre fills three floors of the Presidential Palace complex with interactive exhibits on how Lithuania works: its territory, its people and the institutions that run it. Visitors pick their own topics at interactive stands and follow more than 700 scannable codes.
A family activity booklet, "Pažink Lietuvą", gives preschoolers tasks: voting on shared rules, checking the President's schedule and making their own state decoration.
Danger Park is a safety center where kids learn how to react to emergencies by acting them out. Six themed zones cover a smoky home, street traffic on bikes and scooters, a forest, an airport and plane cabin, natural disasters such as earthquakes, and getting lost in a crowd. An educator leads each group through more than 100 situations, and kids leave with a certificate.
The national railway museum fills part of the second floor of Vilnius station, with almost 900 exhibits on how Lithuania's trains run: passenger travel, track maintenance and signaling.
Outside, the Rail Park (Bėgių parkas) spreads 12 exhibits over 7,100 square meters: locomotives, wagons, a water steam pump and a wagon heating boiler. It suits train-mad kids who want to see the real thing up close.
The museum fills the city's first public power plant. Downstairs are its original steam boilers, turbines and control panel. The 1,000 m² Transformation Hall puts the two largest Tesla coils in the Baltics inside a Faraday cage, and challenges at each exhibit earn points to swap for souvenirs.
The two top floors hold an interactive science zone with a Jacob's ladder, a Möbius strip and a Bernoulli ball.
Labyrinthus runs actor-led group games in a 700 m² dark maze and a two-floor house called Joker House. The kids' games are milder: in Ghost Hunters, teams search for a ritual candle, solve puzzles, crawl through hidden tunnels and meet the ghost, while Maze Adventure has kids crack coded chests and dodge bell traps in dim light with a guide. Teen and adult games lean into horror.
Gilužis Beach sits on Gelūžė, a lake on the city's western edge and the deepest and cleanest one in the area. The shore is open and windier than most city beaches, so it draws sailors and water-sports fans, and a sailing club runs lessons for kids.
On land there's a playground, outdoor fitness equipment, an ice cream kiosk, and a barbecue area with grills, tables and benches.
Vilnius TV Tower is the tallest structure in Lithuania, at 326.4 meters. The observation deck sits 170 meters up on the 67th floor, with a bistro looking out over the city and an open terrace in the warm season.
At its foot, granite markers and the bronze "Sacrifice" sculpture remember the 14 people killed defending the tower on January 13, 1991, and a small park shows historic broadcast antennas.
A small cross-country ski area on an open field between Perkūnkiemio and Leičių streets, laid out as three linked routes: the 200 m Leičių Path through the middle, the 500 m REWO Loop around the edge, and the 1,000 m Perkūnas Trail joining them into one circuit.
Kids trying skis for the first time can stay on the short path while older ones lap the full kilometer.
A 0.6-hectare green square built around a small, partly planted sand dune, a nod to the dune landscape of Lithuania Minor. Kids use the dune as one oversized sandbox.
Around it are a small rubber-surfaced play area, a picnic spot with tables and benches, and courts for basketball, tennis and volleyball plus a mini football pitch. A path loops the lawn, planted with young birches and pines.
Salotė Beach sits on the shore of Lake Salotė, close to the Pilaitė housing estates, and is looked after by Grinda, the city's maintenance company. Kids get a playground and a trampoline by the sand, plus two beach volleyball courts.
Four cafes and an outdoor coffee machine cover snacks, and there are changing cabins, toilets and a paid sauna. Grinda tests the water and sand and organizes lifeguards.
Lazdynai is the largest pool complex in the city, built as a water sports base for the public and for athletes. It has a 10-lane, 50 m Olympic pool and an 8-lane, 25 m diving pool with towers up to 10 m.
A quarter of the big pool's floor can be raised for children's sessions, and a viewing stand looks over the water for watching lessons and swim meets.
A Polynesian-themed aqua park spread over several floors. There are nine slides, from family boat rides on the Ohana river to the 60 km/h Moreja volcano, plus the Dolphins' sea wave pool with waves up to 1.5 m and the 137 m Canoe river for floating on rings.
Smaller children get the Game island, eight platforms of tunnels and slides where they control the water jets, watched by lifeguards.
An indoor electric go-kart center with two tracks. The main track is 500 m long with plenty of turns and impact barriers; kids 8 and up drive their own karts there, and younger kids can ride as a passenger in a two-seater with an adult.
Ages 2 to 5 get a separate Baby Track in slow Nano karts, with room for a parent to sit behind.
A 2,500 m² indoor play park in the Ogmios miestas shopping village, with two trampoline zones for bigger kids and separate trampolines for under-10s. There is a three-level climbing frame with slides and tunnels, a spinning vortex tunnel, a 140 m² knitted play net, a trampoline game played against a screen, interactive bikes and a foosball table for 22. A pizzeria is on site.
The Vilnius Book Fair is the city's yearly book fair, held indoors at LITEXPO, the Lithuanian Exhibition and Congress Centre. Families walk the exhibitors' stands and browse.
It is a come-and-go visit, so you can stay for an hour or a whole afternoon. It suits kids who already enjoy browsing a bookshop more than toddlers who need to run.
Pramogų Arena is a covered ice rink that runs public skating sessions through the day, alongside ice hockey academies, figure skating classes and curling. Kids skate laps on open ice, rental skates come from the staff at the rink, and anyone unsure on skates can ask staff for pointers. The Ledo Kavinė café sits on site for a warm drink afterward.
A sandy beach on the Neris river, looked after by Grinda, the city maintenance company, which runs its lifeguard base here. Kids get a playground, basketball and beach volleyball courts, a boxing bag and new outdoor gym equipment. There are showers, a drinking water station, a grill area with tables and benches, and a stop for the river passenger boats.
The largest and longest city-run beach, a Blue Flag stretch of sand on a bend of the Neris river, backed by Valakampiai forest. The beach has a big sports area with six volleyball courts, beach football and basketball courts, a playground, and a barbecue area with grills and picnic tables.
A renovated footpath links it to Valakampiai Beach II.
Three white concrete crosses, 12 meters tall, stand on top of the hill in Kalnai Park. A small observation deck at their base looks out over the Old Town, and broken pieces of the earlier monument, pulled down by the Soviet authorities in 1950, lie a few meters below.
Kalnai Park around it has wooded hills, paths and benches, and the Bernardine Garden sits at the foot.
An ice rink on the ground floor of the Akropolis mall, open all year for public skating in timed sessions. Cafes ring the rink, so parents can sit and watch, and the ice also hosts figure skating shows and hockey games.
New skaters can skate with a penguin aid to hold on to, and protective pads are lent free. Kids can join figure skating and hockey training.
360 Arena is a 7,900 m² indoor hall of trampolines and interactive sports games. Older kids get acrobatic trampolines, an airbag, a ninja course, a volcano, an air track for gymnastics and light-up challenge games such as ValoJump and iWall.
Younger kids have separate junior and toddler zones, including four smaller trampolines inside the play structure. Eleven themed party rooms and the 360 Food restaurant are on site.
Vilnius Auto Museum fills a former taxi depot with over 100 historic cars and motorcycles from 10 countries. Exhibits run from the first cars of the late 1800s through interwar Lithuania and World War II vehicles to race cars and cars that carried Lithuanian presidents.
Younger kids can try a Ford Model T and hunt for secret doors in cars, and a children's area has toy cars, coloring and books.
Mrs. Majer worries about everything: the weather, accidents, whatever might go wrong. Her husband calmly drinks his tea. Then a tiny bird turns up in their garden, and raising it slowly loosens her grip on her fears.
Lėlė's new show, with puppets and three actors, adapts the picture book by German author Wolf Erlbruch, published in English as Mrs. Meyer the Bird. A gentle story about letting go of fear.
Somewhere around eight, kids stop wanting soft play and start asking for the harder climbing wall, the escape room, the laser tag rematch. These are the places and family events we've found for that age: active spots, museums with enough story to hold a ten-year-old, and shows pitched above the toddler crowd.
Logic Games runs two separate escape rooms. Geimerio lobis is a puzzle room built for kids and families: a team searches the room, solves riddles and opens locks to reach a treasure chest holding small sweets. The room is never locked, stays well lit and has no jump scares.
Zodiakas is a locked room for teens and adults, built around the Zodiac killer story.
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's book as a Lithuanian musical, written and directed by composer Jonas Sakalauskas. A live orchestra and choir play the score while aerial acrobats, projections and lighting fill the arena stage.
It is performed in Lithuanian, so kids who know the story will follow it best. Younger kids get the colorful sets and projections; older kids and adults get the story.
A well-known fairy tale told with puppets and objects: a witch stepmother turns her stepsons into birds, and their sister takes a long, hard road to save them. The staging mixes puppetry with clowning and street-theater techniques.
The creators frame it around hard questions, like living in a threatening world, alongside courage, patience and looking after family. It suits kids ready for a story with real danger in it.
The Ukrainian Classical Ballet brings Tchaikovsky's Christmas ballet to Vilnius for the first time. Marie gets a wooden toy soldier from her uncle Drosselmeyer, and at night he comes alive, fights an army of mice and travels with her to a land of sweets.
One of the world's most performed ballets, it suits kids who can sit through two acts. Reading the story beforehand helps younger ones follow along.
Lazertronas is a laser tag arena: teams play in a darkened hall with soft inflatable obstacles, smoke and light effects. An instructor explains the gear and rules before rounds of about 10 to 15 minutes. Groups book the whole arena, mostly for birthdays and class outings, and can use a lounge room during their slot and for 30 minutes after, at no extra cost.
Castellan's House is the newest branch of the National Museum of Lithuania, and it tells the country's story through ideas and people rather than cases of artifacts. Six rooms each take one theme: creativity, beliefs, struggles, fractures, global links and faces.
The building looks like an old Gothic or Renaissance townhouse, set back from the street with a quiet courtyard. It suits school-age kids with some curiosity about history.
An interactive exhibition run by Lithuania's State Service for Protected Areas, built as a way into the country's national and regional parks and reserves. The main hall is styled as a meadow, with grasses, birds and grasshoppers all around and clouds overhead.
Kids can listen to bird calls, handle real specimens, try the quiz table and touch screens, and watch nature films in a bat-themed cinema room.
The Bank of Lithuania's Money Museum tells the story of money across five halls, about 300 square meters in all. It starts with the oldest forms of exchange, such as grain, fur and amber (long traded in this region), and ends with digital currency.
The exhibits are interactive, and audio guides come in several languages, so kids who don't read Lithuanian can still follow along.
Lumina is an evening light trail through the Vilnius University Botanical Garden in Kairėnai, with more than 200 light installations. This year's theme is cinema: kids meet Charlie Chaplin, Marilyn Monroe, James Bond, Star Wars characters and Mr. Bean, and pass scenes from Cinderella and The Jungle Book, with music and sound effects made for the park.
Kids can also play a phone game and win prizes.
Careful, Magic! is a new show from children's illusionist Alan Gladkov. When the lights go down, the tricks begin: objects appear out of nowhere, with plenty of laughs and surprises along the way.
It plays to kids and adults at once. Some kids will believe every trick, and some parents will try to work out how it's done.
PEW PEW VR is a free-roam virtual reality arena. Players wear headsets and move through a 120 m² space in teams of up to three, hiding behind virtual cover across six game rooms.
The fantasy version drops kids into pirate, medieval and cyberpunk worlds, a co-op mode with some horror elements pits the team against attackers and a boss, and the military version is a realistic shooter with weapon recoil.
An indoor climbing gym with a bouldering area over thick crash mats and high walls climbed on a rope with full safety gear. Staff show first-timers around and explain how the routes are marked, and shoes and harnesses can be rented.
Kids' classes mix climbing games with technique, some taught in English, and themed birthday parties come with a host. A café area lets parents sit and watch.
Keistuoliai started in 1989, when three music conservatory students and their lecturer set up the first independent theater of its kind in Lithuania. It still plays in the Press House (Spaudos rūmai), a Soviet-era tower.
Weekend daytime shows are made for children, such as a play about the world of childhood built around kids' own sayings. Evening plays and concerts are for teens and adults.
The museum fills the Small Radziwiłł Palace, a 17th-century building in the Old Town whose wing held the Vilnius City Theatre from 1796. The collection covers Lithuanian stage, music and film: costumes, set designs and models, posters, musical instruments, and film cameras made between the 1930s and 1970s. Exhibitions rotate. Workshops for kids cover animation, sound effects for film and set design.
The Treasury of Vilnius Cathedral fills the Church of St. Michael the Archangel and the former Bernardine Convent beside it. Golden chalices and monstrances from the 14th century, set with pearls and gemstones, sit next to richly patterned church textiles.
The whole treasury was hidden before World War II and stayed missing until 1985. Best for school-age kids with patience for display cases.
MO Museum holds more than 6,000 works of Lithuanian modern and contemporary art from the 1950s to today: painting, photography, video, sculpture and installation. The Studio Libeskind building stands on the site of the old Lietuva Cinema, with a sculpture garden and terrace beside it that are always open.
Family Sundays bring theater games and shows for babies and toddlers, plus workshops for older kids inside the main exhibition.
The bastion is a 16th-century piece of the old city wall: a tower, a horseshoe-shaped artillery platform, and a tunnel joining them. Inside, the exhibition shows how the city defended itself, from early grenades and mortars to 17th- and 18th-century cannons. Kids can spot the winged hussars and hear the legend of the Basilisk, said to have lived in a cave in the bastion hill.
House of Histories is the newest branch of the National Museum of Lithuania, opened in 2021 in an 18th-century building. A large exhibition fills the ground floor and a smaller one sits upstairs, and each comes with workshops, both live and online.
The current major show traces Lithuanian high tech, from lasers and biotechnology to space technology and robotics.
The Old Arsenal holds the National Museum of Lithuania's archaeology collection, a 12,000-year walk from the first people after the ice melted to the Baltic tribes of the Iron Age.
The ground floor has Stone Age tools and weapons and replicas of seven key finds. Upstairs covers the 1st to 13th centuries: farming, metalwork, weapons and ceramics.
The last tower of Vilnius's medieval Upper Castle, on top of Gediminas Hill. Inside, narrow steps climb past castle models, armor, Baltic jewelry and an interactive timeline where kids can picture a Crusader attack. The observation deck looks out over the red roofs and church towers of the Old Town.
Legend says Grand Duke Gediminas dreamed of an iron wolf howling on this hill and founded the city here.
The residence of Lithuania's grand dukes, gone from the mid-1600s and rebuilt this century, is now a national museum. Four routes run through it: surviving castle walls and archaeological finds, furnished Renaissance and Baroque state rooms, weapons and palace kitchen displays, and temporary exhibitions.
The state rooms route climbs an observation tower with views over the city. Outside are a Renaissance garden and bas-reliefs.
Vilnius Ice Rink (Vilniaus ledas) is the open-air Christmas skating rink set up in Town Hall Square, in the heart of the Old Town. Kids skate in timed sessions under the open sky.
Best for kids who have skated before, or who are happy holding a grown-up's hand on the ice.
One night a year, museums across Vilnius open their doors for free. Inside there are exhibits, workshops, stories and educational events, and more of the program happens throughout the city.
It suits school-age kids who like exploring museums and families happy to make an evening of it. Toddlers who fade at bedtime may find it a stretch.
Giliuko laboratorija is a hands-on science lab from the education company Edugilė, stocked with test tubes, flasks and materials for kids to run their own experiments. Families book it for science birthday parties, where kids work with dry ice, test polymers and build robots, then have cake and games in their own party space.
The same team runs STEAM clubs for primary-school kids and one-off workshops.
A LEGO creativity center where kids learn science, engineering and coding by building. Each weekly class opens with a short talk about the day's model, then kids build it in pairs from Bricks4Kidz's own designs (not sold in toy stores) and finish with free play.
The youngest come with a parent and build with DUPLO. The center also runs holiday camps and themed LEGO birthday parties.
Šeškinės ozas is a 1,160-meter ridge, 3 to 18 meters high, left by glacier meltwater some 16,000 to 18,000 years ago. Now a protected natural monument, it has walking trails and information boards along its winding crest, and a small pond, Lake Šeškiukas, below it. Kids can climb the high points for views over the city and look for squirrels and hedgehogs in the nearby woods.
A white granite pillar topped with a crown of stars marks the spot French geographers fixed as the center of Europe in 1989. Sculptor Gediminas Jokūbonis built the pillar in 2004, beside the marker stone unveiled in 1997.
The area around it has been a protected reserve since 1992, taking in Lake Girija, the Bernotai Mound, a hillside and the neighboring forest.
The Old Town's main square opens in front of the neo-classical cathedral, with a 57-meter bell tower standing apart from it and the Gediminas monument nearby.
Kids can hunt for the stebuklas (miracle) stone: local legend says step on it, turn around three times, and a wish comes true. Red granite in the paving traces the old Lower Castle fortifications. Winter brings the city's tallest Christmas tree.
A forest rope park with six harness courses strung between the trees. Yellow and Orange are built for younger kids, while Green, Blue, Red and Gray climb higher for teens and adults. Instructors run the courses, and a parent can go along with a younger child.
Three forest pavilions are rented out for birthday parties, and orienteering games run for groups.
A playground and climbing area in the Business Garden office park, on the edge of the Lazdynai forest. The centerpiece is a giant green praying mantis climbing frame. Beside it, BONOBO runs a paid outdoor climbing wall on the parking building, with a 10 m beginner wall and routes up to 22 m.
Between the office buildings, a garden of almost 40,000 plants has paths and leisure spots.
Pelesos Square is a renovated green slope between Pelesos and Liepkalnio streets, about 600 m from the railway station. It has two playgrounds for different ages, and the one for older kids is set into the hillside around an 11 m metal slide.
Sports areas, a lookout point, a rain garden, benches, a drinking fountain and a public toilet fill out the rest of the square.
A 29-hectare pine and birch wood on the edge of Karoliniškės and Lazdynai, near the TV tower. Paved, lit paths pass wooden sculptures of witches, mythical creatures and fairytale scenes set up in 1987, plus a playground and a gazebo.
After dark, 10 Vilnius legends glow on the paths and treetops, among them the Iron Wolf, the Basilisk and Saint Casimir. Squirrels and woodpeckers are common in the woods.
Forum Sports Club is a members' club at Forum Palace whose pool hall has a 25 m three-lane pool with cascades and a separate kids' pool. Single-visit passes open it to non-members too.
Around the pool are saunas, Turkish and infrared baths and Jacuzzis, and the club also runs a supervised kids' club, a table tennis area and an outdoor basketball terrace.
Molinė Virtuvė is a ceramics studio where parents and kids sit at shared tables and model clay together, with the team helping at every step. Kids shape bowls, cups or anything they like, then decorate them with colored underglaze paints or a marbling technique.
No experience is needed. The studio dries, fires and glazes every piece and packs it safely for you to take home.
Megazone is a laser tag arena with a two-level maze of about 700 square meters, sound and light effects, and room for up to 32 players. Players wear vests with sensors and use laser guns that leave no bruises, unlike paintball. Each booking is private to the group, so it suits a class birthday or a family outing. Games run in 10-minute rounds after a short safety briefing.
ACTION! by Apollo is a games center inside the Ozas shopping mall, with bowling lanes, a space-themed laser tag maze, a Hologate virtual reality arena and a BLITZ VR simulator. Billiards, darts, table curling and karaoke round it out.
School-age kids and teens get the most from bowling and laser tag. There is little here for toddlers.
The main branch of the city's public library network. Besides the book stacks, it has a Creativity Space with a 3D printer, smart LEGO kits, Micro:bit boards and eight computers, where staff help kids and adults try coding and 3D modeling.
The Music and Art Reading Room lends CDs, vinyl and films, and has a piano that visitors can play.
This puppet theater has staged shows since 1958 and plays in the Oginskiai Palace on Arklių Street. The children's repertoire mixes puppet, shadow and object theater, from Pinocchio, Cinderella and The Snow Queen to new Lithuanian plays.
In the cellar, the Living Puppet Museum shows puppets, masks and set pieces made in the theater's own workshops in the same building, with tours led by professional puppeteers.
The National Gallery of Art shows Lithuanian painting, sculpture, prints, photography, installations and video from the 20th and 21st centuries, drawn from a collection of more than 46,000 works. A permanent display of the collection runs alongside changing exhibitions.
The education center runs guided tours, hands-on workshops and summer camps for children and families. The building is set up for wheelchairs and strollers.
A small museum in a baroque Old Town house, devoted to 50-million-year-old Baltic amber. Kids can hunt for insects trapped in the resin (a mosquito, a grasshopper leg), find amber in white, green and even blue, and see a 3-kilogram piece.
Stairs lead down to a cellar with 15th-century kilns and a patch of street paved 500 years ago. Upstairs is an amber jewelry gallery and shop.
The Museum of Illusions fills 600 m² of a historic building on Vokiečių Street with hands-on exhibits that mix optics, physics and art: optical illusions, installations, gravity and light experiments, and historical illusions.
Exhibits are interactive, photos are allowed everywhere, and guides on the floor explain how each trick works. Curious school-age kids who like asking why get the most out of it.
The first museum in Lithuania devoted to LEGO, built from a private collection of more than 2,000 modern sets. Themed zones cover LEGO City, a medieval village, pirates and Vikings, the Wild West, Minecraft, dinosaurs and space, plus a giant minifigure wall.
Exhibits are look-only, but the construction wall lets kids build and add to a shared piece. Trains and lights run on a short program every hour.
Vilnius's Christmas Run is one of Lithuania's oldest running events, and the 2025 edition was its 50th. Thousands of runners, many in Christmas costumes, follow a route through the Old Town.
The schedule was moved later so runners go after dark, and the youngest kids get an Elves' Run of their own. It suits families after a festive outing that gets everyone moving.
Vilnius Light Festival turns the Old Town into a walk of light installations, digital art and moving light on the buildings. Families follow the installations through streets, squares and courtyards, including undiscovered places in the Old Town.
It suits kids who are happy to walk outdoors in winter. Come for a few installations or make a longer loop.
The Marsiečiai Children's Run is the kids' race of the Swedbank Vilnius Marathon: a 200 m dash from Cathedral Square in the Old Town, with kids starting in age groups. Each runner wears a bib with a timing chip, and results go up on the race website.
It suits kids who want to race on marathon day. The youngest can have a parent run beside them.
The event studio of cookbook author Beata Nicholson's Beatos virtuvė: a 130 m² kitchen with sofas for the grown-ups, booked privately for birthdays and christenings. Kids bake their own pizzas with a baker from Jurgis ir Drakonas, decorate fairy cupcakes or play ice cream shop, and older kids can take on a two-course chef challenge. A few times a year it also runs four- and five-day kids' cooking camps.
Džiaugsmo ratas is a small art studio founded in 2009 by artist and art therapist Elytė Krasauskaitė. Kids paint, draw and try mixed media in groups of up to 10, and ceramics classes teach hand-building with clay, with pieces fired and glazed to take home. Teens can take a more serious academic drawing course. All materials are supplied, and the studio also runs creative birthday parties.
Ribiškės is a range of hills in Pavilniai Regional Park, shaped by a retreating glacier into gullies, small streams and a mix of shady spruce forest, open meadows and wide viewpoints.
Walking routes of 3 or 6 km climb and drop through it, past a few preserved rural huts and the Kaukysa rivulet. In winter the slopes are open to anyone on skis.
A small family-run alpaca farm in the village of Raudoniškės, between Vilnius and Trakai. The owners lead each visit themselves: a short talk about alpaca wool, temperament and how the herd is raised, then time to feed and stroke the animals. Groups are kept small.
A gazebo on the farm suits a family picnic, and guided walks with an alpaca are also offered.
Užupis is the smallest district of Vilnius, a hilly artists' quarter across the Vilnelė River from the Old Town that declared itself an independent republic, half as a joke, in 1997.
Kids can find the trumpet-blowing Angel of Užupis in the main square, ride the Swing of Destiny under the Užupis Bridge, look for the Užupis Mermaid by the river, and wander the Užupis Art Incubator's changing open-air sculptures.
A treetop rope park on the bank of the Neris, with six courses of rising difficulty and more than 60 obstacles. Younger kids get their own routes with nets, a playground and a trampoline.
Taller climbers can ride the 401 m zip line across the river or take the Elephant Flight, a 16 m free-fall jump. Every climber follows a safety briefing first.
Lithuania's largest botanical garden has its main 191-hectare site on a former manor estate in Kairėnai, with forest, meadows, streams and ponds. Kids can walk the Japanese Garden, see some 600 lilac bushes on Lilac Hill, and climb through the award-winning Green Building to its observation terrace, past a display of spiny plants. In snowy winters, marked tracks open for cross-country skiing and sledging.
Pūčkoriai Exposure is the tallest exposed cliff in Lithuania: 65 meters high and 260 meters wide, above the Vilnia River in Pavilniai Regional Park. A trail with wide stairs, wooden walkways and terraces passes both the top and the bottom, so kids can look up at the cliff and down from it.
Old Polish military trenches and a concrete bunker still sit at the site.
A protected stretch of the Vilnia River valley, shaped by the last glaciers. A history trail follows the river from the Pūčkoriai Dam, near the Pūčkoriai Exposure, the highest outcrop in Lithuania, with a sundial on the bank beside it.
The Belmontas waterfalls run by an old water mill site. Kids can look for the ponds of a 16th-century cannon foundry and 20th-century bunkers, or walk the Ribiškių Labyrinth.
Montis Magia Pikas is a full-service climbing gym run by the Montis Magia climbing club, with about 1,187 square meters of wall. Tall rope walls take up most of the hall, and a separate bouldering area has lower walls climbed without a rope.
Training boards cover stronger climbers. The club also runs a climbing school whose instructors teach rope technique and mountain skills.
BONOBO is a climbing gym with more than 100 bouldering problems and a 10-meter lead wall fitted with four auto-belays. A team of route setters changes the problems every week, so repeat visits stay fresh.
There's also an adjustable Kilter Board, a separate training area, and a bar with coffee, drinks and snacks where parents can sit while kids climb.
MaryMaris is an indoor play park in the Akropolis mall, built around a multi-level air maze with tube slides, nets and obstacles. Around it sit a trampoline complex, a ball pit, a Volcano to climb and slide down, a free fall tower, a ninja obstacle course and sports machines.
A family restaurant and party cabins for birthdays are on site.
SkyPark fills the third floor of the Vilnius Outlet mall with a trampoline zone, trampoline dodgeball, and regular and interactive basketball hoops. Younger kids head for an 11-meter, five-level climbing playground with slides, an obstacle course and soft-ball cannons.
Between jumps there are bumper cars, mini bowling, table football, table tennis and touch-screen games. Craft Pizza, a pizzeria on site, serves thick-crust American pizza.
Lithuania's national library fills a 1963 building on Gediminas Avenue, the first in the Baltics designed and built as a library, which reopened after a reconstruction that ended in 2016.
Beyond the reading rooms and the skylit atrium lined with books, it has a children's activity center called Žaisloteka (Toytheque), a makerspace called PATS SAU, a media makerspace, a cinema room and a music room.
The State Knowledge Centre fills three floors of the Presidential Palace complex with interactive exhibits on how Lithuania works: its territory, its people and the institutions that run it. Visitors pick their own topics at interactive stands and follow more than 700 scannable codes.
A family activity booklet, "Pažink Lietuvą", gives preschoolers tasks: voting on shared rules, checking the President's schedule and making their own state decoration.
Danger Park is a safety center where kids learn how to react to emergencies by acting them out. Six themed zones cover a smoky home, street traffic on bikes and scooters, a forest, an airport and plane cabin, natural disasters such as earthquakes, and getting lost in a crowd. An educator leads each group through more than 100 situations, and kids leave with a certificate.
The national railway museum fills part of the second floor of Vilnius station, with almost 900 exhibits on how Lithuania's trains run: passenger travel, track maintenance and signaling.
Outside, the Rail Park (Bėgių parkas) spreads 12 exhibits over 7,100 square meters: locomotives, wagons, a water steam pump and a wagon heating boiler. It suits train-mad kids who want to see the real thing up close.
The museum fills the city's first public power plant. Downstairs are its original steam boilers, turbines and control panel. The 1,000 m² Transformation Hall puts the two largest Tesla coils in the Baltics inside a Faraday cage, and challenges at each exhibit earn points to swap for souvenirs.
The two top floors hold an interactive science zone with a Jacob's ladder, a Möbius strip and a Bernoulli ball.
Labyrinthus runs actor-led group games in a 700 m² dark maze and a two-floor house called Joker House. The kids' games are milder: in Ghost Hunters, teams search for a ritual candle, solve puzzles, crawl through hidden tunnels and meet the ghost, while Maze Adventure has kids crack coded chests and dodge bell traps in dim light with a guide. Teen and adult games lean into horror.
Gilužis Beach sits on Gelūžė, a lake on the city's western edge and the deepest and cleanest one in the area. The shore is open and windier than most city beaches, so it draws sailors and water-sports fans, and a sailing club runs lessons for kids.
On land there's a playground, outdoor fitness equipment, an ice cream kiosk, and a barbecue area with grills, tables and benches.
Vilnius TV Tower is the tallest structure in Lithuania, at 326.4 meters. The observation deck sits 170 meters up on the 67th floor, with a bistro looking out over the city and an open terrace in the warm season.
At its foot, granite markers and the bronze "Sacrifice" sculpture remember the 14 people killed defending the tower on January 13, 1991, and a small park shows historic broadcast antennas.
A small cross-country ski area on an open field between Perkūnkiemio and Leičių streets, laid out as three linked routes: the 200 m Leičių Path through the middle, the 500 m REWO Loop around the edge, and the 1,000 m Perkūnas Trail joining them into one circuit.
Kids trying skis for the first time can stay on the short path while older ones lap the full kilometer.
A 0.6-hectare green square built around a small, partly planted sand dune, a nod to the dune landscape of Lithuania Minor. Kids use the dune as one oversized sandbox.
Around it are a small rubber-surfaced play area, a picnic spot with tables and benches, and courts for basketball, tennis and volleyball plus a mini football pitch. A path loops the lawn, planted with young birches and pines.
Salotė Beach sits on the shore of Lake Salotė, close to the Pilaitė housing estates, and is looked after by Grinda, the city's maintenance company. Kids get a playground and a trampoline by the sand, plus two beach volleyball courts.
Four cafes and an outdoor coffee machine cover snacks, and there are changing cabins, toilets and a paid sauna. Grinda tests the water and sand and organizes lifeguards.
Lazdynai is the largest pool complex in the city, built as a water sports base for the public and for athletes. It has a 10-lane, 50 m Olympic pool and an 8-lane, 25 m diving pool with towers up to 10 m.
A quarter of the big pool's floor can be raised for children's sessions, and a viewing stand looks over the water for watching lessons and swim meets.
A Polynesian-themed aqua park spread over several floors. There are nine slides, from family boat rides on the Ohana river to the 60 km/h Moreja volcano, plus the Dolphins' sea wave pool with waves up to 1.5 m and the 137 m Canoe river for floating on rings.
Smaller children get the Game island, eight platforms of tunnels and slides where they control the water jets, watched by lifeguards.
An indoor electric go-kart center with two tracks. The main track is 500 m long with plenty of turns and impact barriers; kids 8 and up drive their own karts there, and younger kids can ride as a passenger in a two-seater with an adult.
Ages 2 to 5 get a separate Baby Track in slow Nano karts, with room for a parent to sit behind.
A 2,500 m² indoor play park in the Ogmios miestas shopping village, with two trampoline zones for bigger kids and separate trampolines for under-10s. There is a three-level climbing frame with slides and tunnels, a spinning vortex tunnel, a 140 m² knitted play net, a trampoline game played against a screen, interactive bikes and a foosball table for 22. A pizzeria is on site.
The Vilnius Book Fair is the city's yearly book fair, held indoors at LITEXPO, the Lithuanian Exhibition and Congress Centre. Families walk the exhibitors' stands and browse.
It is a come-and-go visit, so you can stay for an hour or a whole afternoon. It suits kids who already enjoy browsing a bookshop more than toddlers who need to run.
Pramogų Arena is a covered ice rink that runs public skating sessions through the day, alongside ice hockey academies, figure skating classes and curling. Kids skate laps on open ice, rental skates come from the staff at the rink, and anyone unsure on skates can ask staff for pointers. The Ledo Kavinė café sits on site for a warm drink afterward.
A sandy beach on the Neris river, looked after by Grinda, the city maintenance company, which runs its lifeguard base here. Kids get a playground, basketball and beach volleyball courts, a boxing bag and new outdoor gym equipment. There are showers, a drinking water station, a grill area with tables and benches, and a stop for the river passenger boats.
The largest and longest city-run beach, a Blue Flag stretch of sand on a bend of the Neris river, backed by Valakampiai forest. The beach has a big sports area with six volleyball courts, beach football and basketball courts, a playground, and a barbecue area with grills and picnic tables.
A renovated footpath links it to Valakampiai Beach II.
Three white concrete crosses, 12 meters tall, stand on top of the hill in Kalnai Park. A small observation deck at their base looks out over the Old Town, and broken pieces of the earlier monument, pulled down by the Soviet authorities in 1950, lie a few meters below.
Kalnai Park around it has wooded hills, paths and benches, and the Bernardine Garden sits at the foot.
An ice rink on the ground floor of the Akropolis mall, open all year for public skating in timed sessions. Cafes ring the rink, so parents can sit and watch, and the ice also hosts figure skating shows and hockey games.
New skaters can skate with a penguin aid to hold on to, and protective pads are lent free. Kids can join figure skating and hockey training.
360 Arena is a 7,900 m² indoor hall of trampolines and interactive sports games. Older kids get acrobatic trampolines, an airbag, a ninja course, a volcano, an air track for gymnastics and light-up challenge games such as ValoJump and iWall.
Younger kids have separate junior and toddler zones, including four smaller trampolines inside the play structure. Eleven themed party rooms and the 360 Food restaurant are on site.
Vilnius Auto Museum fills a former taxi depot with over 100 historic cars and motorcycles from 10 countries. Exhibits run from the first cars of the late 1800s through interwar Lithuania and World War II vehicles to race cars and cars that carried Lithuanian presidents.
Younger kids can try a Ford Model T and hunt for secret doors in cars, and a children's area has toy cars, coloring and books.
Mrs. Majer worries about everything: the weather, accidents, whatever might go wrong. Her husband calmly drinks his tea. Then a tiny bird turns up in their garden, and raising it slowly loosens her grip on her fears.
Lėlė's new show, with puppets and three actors, adapts the picture book by German author Wolf Erlbruch, published in English as Mrs. Meyer the Bird. A gentle story about letting go of fear.
