The Lost Shtetl Museum

In Yiddish, “shtetl” referred to a small town with a large Jewish community. Before the Second World War, more than 200 shtetls dotted Lithuania, and all of them disappeared. The Lost Shtetl invites visitors to step into that vanished world: a lively market square hums with activity, a cantor’s voice rises inside the synagogue, and young people set out in pursuit of their dreams. These same joys, worries, and everyday rhythms once filled hundreds of shtetls across Lithuania.

The largest Jewish history museum in the Baltic States was designed by an international team of architects and designers led by Finnish architect Rainer Mahlamäki. The Lost Shtetl is also the first museum in the Baltics to be included in the world’s most beautiful museums list by the international Prix Versailles architecture and design awards. In 2026, it shared the list with remarkable projects from Abu Dhabi, Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Tokyo, Arlington, and Tashkent.

The museum’s pale building stands out across the plains around Šeduva, its silhouette echoing the outline of a small town. Beside it lies the Memorial Park, designed by landscape architect Enzo Enea, where the plantings and landscape elements mirror the natural surroundings that accompanied shtetl residents from birth to death.

As visitors often note, though the museum bears witness to some of the darkest pages of Lithuania’s history, it is also a place full of light – one you leave changed in a small but meaningful way.