Birštonas whale

Birštonas whale can be seen before arriving at the resort - it is depicted on the city's coat of arms. Why? Known for centuries as a royal resting place, the city with a never-conquered castle, the residents decided that the best symbol is a mystical aquatic animal, reminiscent of a concrete sculpture of a whale found underwater in the Nemunas River and the stories of local fishermen about the giant catfish they caught.

Let's start the story from the beginning. In the interwar period, on the bank of the Nemunas, there was Victoria's spring, covered with a canopy. in 1922 at the idea of the writer Juoz Tumos-Vaižgants, the spring was renamed after Vytautas, and in order to protect the spring from floods, an icebreaker - a hollow concrete pyramid - was built. Around the 1930s, the pyramid turned into a sculpture of a whale about 7 m long and 1.7 m high, whose head indicated the direction of the Nemunas River, and the water of the Vytautas spring flowed from its mouth. The author of the idea, architect Romanas Steikūnas, also designed the famous Red Cross healing rooms. The construction of Banginukas cost as much as five thousand "smetonian" litas. Many photographs of the whale with celebrities of that time have survived to this day. After the Kaunas hydroelectric power plant was built, the water level of the Nemunas rose by no more than 3 m, so the sculpture ended up under water. After regaining Independence, they tried to destroy it and pull it out of the river, but it was not possible due to its extremely strong structure. Today, divers find it at the Nemunas loop, at the foot of Mount Vytautas, at a depth of about 2 m, and travelers can only try to see it while standing on the shore.

in 2014 at the end of the year, near the old "Tulpė" mud treatment plants, a new whale with a fountain on its back appeared in the lower reaches of the Druskupis stream. This is the work of the sculptor Zigmos Buterlevičius, which helped to fulfill the desire of the people of Birštoniški to have their own ... whale. Birštonas whale can be seen before arriving at the resort - it is depicted on the city's coat of arms. Why? Known for centuries as a royal resting place, the city with a never-conquered castle, the residents decided that the best symbol is a mystical aquatic animal, reminiscent of a concrete sculpture of a whale found underwater in the Nemunas River and the stories of local fishermen about the giant catfish they caught.

Author Zigmas Buterlevičius. 2015