- Type
- Castle
- Built
- 1844 · 19th century
- Style
- Renaissance Revival architecture
- Coordinates
- 55.2525°, 22.2842°
History
After a great fire in 1836, the Russian authorities drew up a new plan for Tauragė, then a town right on the border with Prussia. As part of it a two-storey brick customs house was built in 1844–1847, which also held smugglers and illegal migrants caught at the frontier. In 1852 it was walled in and given a bathhouse and outbuildings, and in 1866 the complex became a prison, gaining corner towers and loopholes. In the 20th century it housed in turn a psychiatric and then a county hospital, barracks, a gymnasium and a commercial school between the wars, and a secondary school and a polytechnic in Soviet times, when two new buildings went up in the courtyard.
What to see
The brick complex, with battlements, corner turrets and a wall around the courtyard, stands in the centre of Tauragė. It houses the Tauragė Regional Museum with history, ethnography and nature displays, as well as an art school and the children's department of the town library. The courtyard hosts events and town festivities – in January 2023 it staged the opening of Tauragė's year as Lithuanian Capital of Culture.
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