Trakai Island Castle

Trakai Island Castle stands on an island in Lake Galve in Lithuania, built in stages from the late fourteenth century under Grand Duke Vytautas the Great, replacing an earlier wooden fortification, and served for a period as one of the principal residences of the rulers of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Constructed largely of red brick in the Gothic style, unusual for a Lithuanian castle of its era, its layout combines a defensive outer courtyard with a more heavily fortified inner residential keep, connected to the mainland by a series of wooden bridges. The castle fell into ruin after Lithuania's political and military importance declined in later centuries, and its present appearance is largely the result of an extensive twentieth-century reconstruction carried out under Soviet rule between the 1950s and 1980s, based on archaeological and historical research into its original medieval form. It is one of the most visited historic sites in Lithuania and a national symbol of the medieval Grand Duchy's power.