Birštonas whale

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

Let's start the story from the beginning. During the interwar period, on the banks of the Nemunas River, there was a Victoria Spring covered with a roof. In 1922, at the initiative of writer Juozas Tumas-Vaižgantas, the spring was renamed after Vytautas, and in order to protect the spring from floods, an icebreaker was built - a porous concrete pyramid. Around 1930, the pyramid was transformed into a sculpture of a whale about 7 m long and 1.7 m high, whose head indicated the direction of the Nemunas flow, and water from the Vytautas Spring flowed from its mouth. The author of the idea, architect Romanas Steikūnas, also designed the famous Red Cross health resorts. The construction of the whale cost as much as five thousand "Smetona" litas. Many photographs of the whale with the sights of that time have survived to this day. After the construction of the Kaunas Hydroelectric Power Plant, the water level of the Nemunas River rose by more than 3 m, so the sculpture ended up underwater. After regaining independence, attempts were made to destroy it and pull it out of the river, but it failed due to its extremely strong construction. Today, divers find it at the Nemunas loop, at the foot of Vytautas Kalnas, at a depth of about 2 m, and travelers can only try to see it from the shore.

At the end of 2014, near the old "Tulpė" mud spas, a new whale with a fountain on its back appeared in the lower reaches of the Druskupis stream. In 2023, the sculpture was renovated and installed near the Amphitheater, Birutės g. This is a work by sculptor Zigmas Buterlevičius, which helped fulfill the desire of the people of Birštonas, which is not understood by many, to have their own ... whale.

Author Zigmas Buterlevičius. 2015