Pažaislis Monastery

The construction of the monastery and the Church of the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary began in November 1667 at the initiative of Krzysztof Zygmunt Pac, then Chancellor of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. He brought the Camaldolese to Lithuania to found a monastery with a church that would also serve as his final resting place. Pac died in 1684 and was buried with his wife in the church's crypt. The church was completed by 1676, but the interior decoration continued until 1712. Italian master builders such as Giovanni Battista Frediani and Pietro and Carlo Puttini were instrumental in the construction, while the German master builder Michael Wollscheidt designed the facade ornamentation. Inside, frescoes by Michelangelo Palloni and Giuseppe Rossi, as well as stucco work by Giovanni Merli, are featured. A special feature is the image of the Virgin Mary, a gift from Pope Alexander VII in 1661, which has been on display in the church again since 2000. After the Polish-Lithuanian uprising of 1831, the monastery was closed by Tsar Nicholas I and handed over to the Russian Orthodox Church, leading to alterations and losses. During World War I, it served as a military hospital. In 1920, Sisters of St. Casimir from Chicago revived the Catholic monastic tradition. After the communist takeover in 1948, the order was expelled, and the monastery was used for various purposes, including an archive and a mental hospital. The construction of the Kaunas Reservoir in 1959 transformed it into a lakeside monastery. In 1967, it was placed under the care of the M.K.Čiurlionis Art Museum and renovated, before being returned to the Sisters' Order in 1992.

The Pažaislis Monastery is located on the southeastern outskirts of Kaunas, in the Kaunas City district within the Kaunas region, Lithuania. It stands at an elevation of approx. 60 m above sea level on the Kaunas Sea.