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It’s Kaunas O’clock: A Smiling City Symbol

“Smile… And the wall smiles with you”, isn’t that how the saying goes?

Kaunas, Lithuania is home to the largest number of sundials in the country. A handful of them have become true symbols of the city, and this particular one could definitely be called the official mood lifter.

The ever-happy sundial can be found on the wall of Vilnius University Kaunas Faculty of Humanities, Muitinės g. 8. The project of Antanas Balkė, a sculptor, and an architect Ričardas Krištapavičius, an architect, was installed there in 1986. Its design, inspired by gothic shapes, represents a stream of knowledge coming from the university.

Interestingly enough, the sundial is designed to specifically show the exact time in the city of Kaunas, of all places. This was a silent (and quite secret) protest of the creators against the official “Moscow” time implemented on Soviet-occupied countries.

In 2014, when the faculty was celebrating its 50th birthday, the #kaunastic sundial received a facelift – it’s now smiling in the dark, too.