SchChat - School | Vilnius University

Descriptions

Vilnius University (Lithuanian: Vilniaus universitetas) is a public research university, oldest in the Baltic states and in Northern Europe outside the United Kingdom, Denmark and Sweden.[4] Today it is Lithuania's leading academic institution, ranked among the top 400 (QS)[5] or top 800 (ARWU)[6] universities worldwide. As of 2022 QS ranks VU as 8th in CEE (ex. Russia); an ARWU equivalent would be 11th. The university was founded in 1579 as the Jesuit Academy (College) of Vilnius by Stephen Báthory, King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania. It was the third oldest university (after the Cracow Academy and the Albertina) in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. Due to the failure of the November Uprising (1830–1831), the university was closed down and suspended its operation until 1919. In the aftermath of World War I, the university saw failed attempts to restart it by the local Polish Society of Friends of Science in Wilno (1915 and November 1918), Lithuania (December 1918) and invading Soviet forces (March 1919). It finally resumed operations as Stefan Batory University in Poland (August 1919), a period followed by another Soviet occupation in 1920, and the less than two years of the Republic of Central Lithuania, incorporated into Poland in 1922. Following the Soviet invasion of Poland in September 1939, the university was briefly administered by the Lithuanian authorities (from October 1939), and then after Soviet annexation of Lithuania (June 1940), punctuated by a period of German occupation after Operation Barbarossa, from 1941 to 1944, when it was administrated as the Vilnius State University. In 1945, the Polish community of students and scholars of Stefan Batory University was transferred to Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń. After Lithuania regained its independence in 1990, following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, it resumed its status as one of the prominent universities in Lithuania. The wide-ranging Vilnius University ensemble represents all major architectural styles that predominated in Lithuania: Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque and Classicism. In undergrounds of old University's building is located the cenotaph of eleven Old Prussians tribes along with the small temple of four gods and four goddesses from baltic mythology.