Kaunas

Industrial city in Lithuania, at the confluence of the Neris and Niemen (Neman) rivers, 80 km/50 mi northwest of Vilnius; population (2001 est) 411,600. Kaunas has engineering, textile, and food industries and is an important river port and railway junction. It was the capital of independent Lithuania from 1920 until 1940.

Kaunas was first recorded as a settlement in the 11th century. Throughout the 14th century, it was contested by Lithuania and Teutonic Knights, finally becoming Lithuanian in 1404. It was the centre of a flourishing Lithuanian and Polish trade with Russia and Western Europe in the 15th-17th centuries. The city became Russian in 1795 and was made a provincial capital in 1842. Many historical buildings from the 14th-18th centuries have been preserved. Kaunas was occupied by the Germans in both world wars; in World War II, its large Jewish population fell victim to the Holocaust.