Klaipėda is Lithuania's port and the gateway to the Curonian Spit. Spend day one in the Old Town: Theatre Square, the castle museum, the Black Ghost and the Danė warehouses, then the Clock Museum. Day two, take the Old Ferry to Smiltynė for the Sea Museum and the beach. Give a third day to the spit itself, with the Hill of Witches and Nida's Parnidis Dune.
Lithuania's only seaport was German Memel for most of its history, and the Old Town still reads like it: half-timbered streets, brick warehouses on the Danė and a theatre square. The Curonian Spit sits a five-minute ferry ride across the strait.
The square in front of the 1857 Drama Theatre is the Old Town's centre, with the Ännchen von Tharau fountain restored in 1989. Hitler spoke from that balcony on 23 March 1939; start here, then walk the half-timbered lanes south.
The aquarium and dolphinarium fill a 19th-century Prussian fort on the tip of the Curonian Spit, opened as a museum in 1979. The Old Ferry from Danės g. crosses in minutes; the museum is 1.8 km on foot from the pier, and dolphin shows are ticketed separately.
Nida sits about 50 km down the Curonian Spit, a UNESCO landscape of pine and moving sand. Climb the Parnidis Dune to its sundial for the view over the lagoon, then see Thomas Mann's summer house, where he summered from 1930 to 1932.
The Teutonic Order's Memelburg, founded in 1252, survives as excavated walls inside two bastions, now the city's history museum. Next door, Museum 39/45 sits under a rampart and tells the Second World War in Klaipėda.
More than 1,700 clocks in an 1820s merchant's house, from sundials to a working 1856 tower clock from the old fire station. A branch of the National Museum of Art; the sundial garden behind it is the best part on a bright day.
The old city cemetery became an open-air gallery of 116 granite sculptures, carved at summer symposiums from 1977. It is free and open, and some old gravestones and memorials still stand among the trees.
The three-masted Meridianas, built in Finland in 1948 and a training ship for decades, is now a restaurant moored on the river. Walk on to the red-brick warehouses on Žvejų g., rebuilt in brick after the 19th-century fires.
Lithuania's second-oldest brewery traces itself to 1784 and has brewed as Švyturys since 1946. Tours walk the production floor and end with a tasting; the BHouse gastropub on site looks into the brewhouse through glass.
A hooded, faceless bronze rising out of the water by the castle marina, installed in 2010. It recalls a 1595 legend of a ghost warning a guard that the town would run short of grain and timber.
The expressionist Pranas Domšaitis, born near Königsberg, is the house painter of this National Museum of Art branch, set in four joined 19th-century houses. A quiet hour of colour after the clocks up the street.
Maps, coins and archaeology of the old Prussian borderland.
Gustav Katzke's forge, with iron crosses saved from the old cemetery.
The Second World War in Klaipėda, inside a castle rampart.
The writer spent three summers here, 1930 to 1932.
Neringa's ice-fishing festival of Curonian smelt, held on the spit.
The 32nd edition, with main-stage concerts on Theatre Square.
Midsummer, a national holiday marked with bonfires and herb wreaths.
Music, literature and debate in Nida, the 30th edition.
Three days of concerts and a parade; the first was held in 1934.
Flag-raising and an evening concert on Theatre Square.
The third edition of the city's orchestra weekend.
The tree goes up on Theatre Square, with the ice rink and a market.
About 25 km north. Bus 100 runs to Klaipėda bus station in around 35 minutes, timed to flights.
Trains from Vilnius via Kaunas take about four hours. Book on LTG Link; the timetable shifts with engineering works.
The Old Ferry from Danės g. carries foot passengers and bikes; the New Ferry further south takes cars.
Potato dumplings stuffed with meat, under sour cream and bacon.
Cold pink beetroot soup with a hot potato on the side.
Curonian Spit smokehouses hang bream, eel and perch.
Fried smelt, the winter catch of the lagoon.
Fried rye bread with garlic, the bar snack.
Baked grated potato, crisp at the edges.
The spit-baked tree cake for celebrations.
The city's own brewery, here since 1784.
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