Kiejdany is a city closely related to the history of Poland. From the fifteenth century, they were in the hands of the Radziwiłł family and they owe their buildings with several churches and as many as six markets to them.
In the 15th century, the village of Kiejdany was granted to Radziwiłł Ościkiewicz by Kazimierz Jagiellończyk. City rights granted by Zygmunt III Waza at the end of the 16th century contributed to the rapid development of the center as a commercial and craft center. Today, when visiting Kiejdany, you can find traces of its former glory. It is primarily an urban layout with as many as 6 markets. The Big Market Square with picturesque tenement houses with ornamented gables remained the most representative. There is also a late Gothic church of St. George, a baroque Calvinist church with a crypt with the tombs of the Radziwiłł family, three synagogues, a baroque town hall and a wooden two-tower church of St. Józef with a well-preserved interior. The former Renaissance Lutheran church was turned into a local museum.
Numerous historical attractions of Kiejdany make it a place willingly visited by tourists. It is especially often found on the route of newcomers from Poland, although the Radziwiłłs did not always write well in the history of our country. In 1655, in Kiejdany, Janusz Radziwiłł signed an agreement with the king of Sweden, in which he subjected the Grand Duchy of Lithuania to the rule of Charles Gustav and separated it from the Crown. What was a betrayal for Poles is for Lithuanians a symbol of the struggle for independence. That is why Janusz Radziwiłł has his monument on the market square in Kiejdany.
