Who ruled Vilnius?

Vilnius lies in south-eastern Lithuania where the small Vilnia River flows into the Neris, among wooded hills that gave its first rulers a natural fortress. It grew up as the capital of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the last pagan state in Europe and later one of its largest. Over the following centuries it was a Polish-speaking city, a Russian provincial capital and one of the great centres of Jewish life, known as the "Jerusalem of Lithuania", before becoming the capital of independent Lithuania.

Baltic peoples had lived in the area for thousands of years, and there was a fortified settlement on the castle hill well before written records begin. The map's "Kyivan Rus" phase reflects a coarse border rather than real rule from Kyiv. The city enters history in 1323, when Grand Duke Gediminas sent letters from Vilnius inviting merchants, craftsmen and clergy from western Europe to settle. Legend says he founded the city after dreaming of an iron wolf howling on the hill.

In 1387, after Grand Duke Jogaila had married the Polish queen and accepted Catholic baptism, Lithuania was officially converted to Christianity, and Vilnius received a cathedral and German-style town rights. The personal union with Poland became a full federation with the Union of Lublin in 1569, creating the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Vilnius remained the capital of the Lithuanian half, with its own courts and treasury. Its university, founded by the Jesuits and chartered by King Stephen Báthory in 1579, is now the oldest in the Baltic states. Catholic, Orthodox, Jewish, Tatar and Karaite communities lived side by side, and Baroque churches gave the old town much of its present appearance.

The city suffered badly in the 17th and 18th centuries. Muscovite forces captured and burned it in 1655 and held it until 1661, and a plague in 1710 and several great fires later in the century followed. Meanwhile Jewish scholarship flourished; Elijah ben Solomon, the Vilna Gaon, made the city a leading centre of rabbinic learning in the 18th century.

With the third partition of the Commonwealth in 1795, Vilnius passed to the Russian Empire. Napoleon stayed there on his way to Moscow in 1812, and the remnants of his army died in the streets on the retreat. After the uprisings of 1830 to 1831 and 1863, the tsarist government closed the university and pushed Russification. By 1900 the city's largest groups were Jews and Poles, while Lithuanians were a small minority.

The 20th century brought rapid changes of ruler. German troops occupied Vilnius from 1915, and Lithuania declared its independence there on 16 February 1918. In the wars that followed the city changed hands several times, and in October 1920 Polish forces under General Lucjan Żeligowski seized it in a staged mutiny. It was annexed by Poland in 1922, and Lithuania treated Kaunas as its temporary capital. The Soviet Union handed Vilnius to Lithuania in October 1939, then annexed the whole country in 1940. Under German occupation from 1941 to 1944, most of the city's Jews were murdered, many of them in the Paneriai forest outside the city, during the Holocaust. After 1944 much of the Polish population left for Poland, and the city was resettled by Lithuanians and Russians.

Vilnius became the capital of the Lithuanian SSR within the Soviet Union. On 11 March 1990 Lithuania declared the restoration of its independence there, the first Soviet republic to do so. On 13 January 1991 Soviet troops killed fourteen civilians defending the television tower, but independence was recognised later that year. The old town was listed by UNESCO in 1994, and Lithuania joined NATO and the European Union in 2004. Vilnius is now a capital of about 600,000 people and the country's economic centre.