The Mosque of the Cemetery of the Nemėžis Tatars

In the 14th century, the summer residence of Vytautas, the Grand Duke of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and his wife Julijona was in Nemėžis. In 1397, Vytautas settled the Tartars there, and about 120 of their descendants still live in this settlement.

In 1684, the first mosque was built in Nemėžis that survived till the beginning of the 20th century. It burned down in 1909. In the same year it was restored based on the design of the architect A. Sonin. The mosque was built by the master Macejus Konarskis, and the rebuilding works were sponsored and funded by a Nemėžis Tartar Aleksandras Iliasevičius. The mosque was heavily damaged during the wars and the Soviet period. At the end of World War II, Soviet missile systems firing at the city were installed in the mosque cemetery area. In 1956, the mosque was nearly bulldozed down by the Soviet authorities, but the Tatar community strongly opposed such intentions. In the Soviet era, until 1968, the mosque, like many other sacred buildings, was closed and turned into a grain warehouse, and a year later – into a museum of ethnography. In the 1960s, the mosque nearly burned down again, but was rescued by cutting down an openly blazing minaret. The shrine was restored to the Tatar community in 1978. It was renovated in 1993 and restored in 2009.

The one-storey wooden mosque is of a rectangular layout, with an attic, and covered with a four-sided sheet steel roof. A small hexagonal minaret turret rises above the main facade roof, and it ends with an onion-shaped helm and a peak topped with a crescent moon and a star. The windows are rectangular with flat profiled edging. The main facade has a closed porch with a small triangular pediment covered with a small gable roof. The same facade above the windows is decorated with two decorative elements, the moons with pentagonal stars integrated into the circle. A four-wall annex, a mihrab with a small window facing Mecca is installed in the back wall. Inside, close to the mihrab niche and to the right, is a minbar installed for preaching. The second floor has a small balcony for guests. The men’s and women’s prayer rooms are separated: a smaller room is dedicated to women, and the men’s room walls are decorated with posters with Arabic inscriptions and a rug with a woven image of the Mecca mosque.

An old Tatar cemetery is located next to the mosque. Another cemetery is on the outskirts of Nemėžis settlement.

Detail