The machines stayed put: the Energy and Technology Museum

Vilnius’s first public power station ran from 1903 to 1998. Five years after it stopped it opened as a museum — in the same halls, with the same machines standing where they had always stood.

In 1903 Vilnius got electric light from a plant on the bank of the Neris: street lamps first, then houses, then industry. It kept the city running for ninety-five years. The steam boilers were shut down in 1997 and the water heaters in 1998, and the building went quiet for the first time in nearly a century.

The machines stayed

It was not turned into offices or flats. As early as 1982 the plant had been listed as a monument of technical history, and in 2000 an agreement was signed to make a museum of it. It opened on 15 February 2003 — the day the power station turned a hundred.

The point is that almost nothing was moved. You walk between boilers, turbines and switchboards in the hall where they worked, on the floor they were bolted to. The administrative building next door is not part of the museum at all: the Italian embassy is in it.

What drew us to this place

Most technology museums are collections — objects brought in from elsewhere and arranged. This one is the machine itself, left in place, with the museum built around it. There are five permanent expositions now: energy, the industry of Vilnius, an interactive hall for children, the Virsmas hall, and a roof terrace over the river.

Where to see it

Energetikos ir technikos muziejus — Rinktinės g. 2, Vilnius, ten minutes on foot from the Old Town, across the Neris.

On the last Sunday of every month the permanent exposition is free.

Where to see it in person: Energetikos ir technikos muziejus · Vilnius