Grūto Parkas — Attraction in Grūtas

Amazing place and well worth the hour drive from Vilnius. The soviet statues, carvings, paintings, large stained glass panels and even a couple monumental wooden heads of Lenin teach us a couple things. First, because many items on display include a photo of where the item was placed before, we can feel how oppressive it must have felt to walk by these statues every day. Second, because of the owner's style of collecting these items, we can see exactly what is meant by the term "soviet realism". This style of art was the only one allowed in soviet times. If an artist was unable or unwilling to create in this style he or she was cut off by the system. I also learned how desperately the soviets tried to paint Lithuanians as good soviet citizens: there are at least 3 statues of a seemingly courageous young woman communist partisan. This is an example of a propaganda machine gone mad. She was not ethnically Lithuanian nor did she even speak Lithuanian. On a particularly weird note there is a zoo on the grounds (?) as well as an ersatz soviet canteen. In addition the owner has salvaged soviet era play ground swings and teeter totters that are extremely dangerous for children to play on! Ultimately these oddball additions which also include a souvenir shop do not detract from the value and importance of this park. I can highly recommend a visit. Perhaps this is the type of place that the USA may ultimately set up to display statues and murals of slave owners and people who actively fought against the nation....

If you are in lithuania and happen to be fascinated with soviet history, please take a bus and come to this park!!

🚂USSR statues: super cool, there are quite a lot to see. With explanation cards in eng/lithuanian/russian, you are able to understand each statue and their stories. We took around 1.5-2hrs there to look around pretty slowly. If you’re visiting in summer, make sure to bring bug spray, cuz the mosquitoes didn’t leave us alone 🥲🥲

🐻zoo: the park is somehow half of zoo. They keep a lot of birds, chickens, swans, goats, rabbits and 2 bears in the zoo. The bears are soooo sad and they for sure don’t have good conditions. We feel so sad for them 🥺 i also don’t understand why they lock up swans 🥲

🍀souvenir shops, and some buildings were not opened, which are a shame. There’s a cafe in the park, but the online reviews are really bad…..

💕 in general, such a cool place to visit once in a lifetime. Very interesting and i’m glad they did keep the statues as part of the history. It’s also a very natural park so family/couple can enjoy a lot of fun...

We came hare on a family trip with huge expectations, we love history, sadly we weren’t able to enjoy this park. We came with a small dog, but only agter coming we got to know that dogs are not allowed, we asked if we could hold it on our arms but sadly we couldn’t, it was hot outside therefore we couldn’t leave our pocket dog in the car... near the entrance we found a locked bathroom and we had to fing a security guard to pay those funny 30 cents to be able to take the key to wc after a long trip, butsecurity was no where to be found... all in all the wc was only in the park caffe but to go there we had to buy tickets first and our family member who stayed to watch over our dog couln’t go. Then again one of our university students couldn’t get the discout because we had only ISIC and not LSP. Everywhere else in Lithuania ISIC works the same as LSP, but here they didn’t accept it. The park itself was great for the 2 people who were able to go there, but dor the rest of us it was just sad...