Urban Culture and Everyday Life in Lithuania in the 17th and 18th Centuries

Book excerpt: This book is a collection of scholarly studies focused on urban life and urban culture in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and its capital, Vilnius (Wilno). It covers a wide range of subjects, including the activities of the local craft guilds as well as their houses, the role of religious brotherhoods, and the types and locations of shops and warehouses. The author discusses such aspects of public urban life as inns and pharmacies, music, musicians and musical instruments, and outbreaks of plague, and highlights certain burial customs as well as other elements of urban culture. This posthumous collection contributes significantly to the existing knowledge about forms of urban life in Eastern Europe, the Baltic region, and Lithuania in particular. The book will be useful to architectural and cultural historians as well as all those whose scholarly interests are related to the history and culture of Eastern Europe and the urban legacy of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.