Raudonė is a town

Town

A town is a human settlement larger than a village but smaller than a city. The size a settlement must be in order to be called a "town" varies considerably in different parts of the world, so that, for example, many American "small towns" seem to British people to be no more than villages, while...

 on the Neman River

Neman River

Neman or Niemen or Nemunas, is a major Eastern European river rising in Belarus and flowing through Lithuania before draining into the Curonian Lagoon and then into the Baltic Sea at Klaipėda. It is the northern border between Lithuania and Russia's Kaliningrad Oblast in its lower reaches...

 in Tauragė County

Taurage County

Tauragė County is one of ten counties in Lithuania. It is in the west of the country, and its capital is Tauragė...

, Lithuania

Lithuania

Lithuania , officially the Republic of Lithuania is a country in Northern Europe, the biggest of the three Baltic states. It is situated along the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea, whereby to the west lie Sweden and Denmark...

. The town is primarily known for its castle (Raudonė Castle

Raudone Castle

Raudonė Castle is in Raudonė, Lithuania. Castle construction works started in late 16th century. In the 16th century the castle belonged to King Sigismund II August. A new renaissance castle was built on the ruins of the old one by a German knight, Krispin de Kirschenstein. The castle has since...

) and a large park complex.

History

Under the leadership of King John

John I of Bohemia

John the Blind was the Count of Luxembourg from 1309 and King of Bohemia from 1310 and titular King of Poland. He was the eldest son of the Holy Roman Emperor Henry VII and his wife Margaret of Brabant...

 of Bohemia

Bohemia

Bohemia is a historical region in central Europe, occupying the western two-thirds of the traditional Czech Lands. It is located in the contemporary Czech Republic with its capital in Prague...

 and Duke Henry XIV

Henry XIV, Duke of Bavaria

Henry XIV, duke of Bavaria, as duke of Lower Bavaria also called Henry II., .- Family :He was a son of Stephen I, Duke of Bavaria and Jutta of Schweidnitz....

 of Lower Bavaria

Lower Bavaria

Lower Bavaria is one of the seven administrative regions of Bavaria, Germany, located in the east of the state.- Geography :Lower Bavaria is subdivided into two regions - Landshut and Donau-Wald. Recent election results mark it as the most conservative part of Germany, generally giving huge...

, an expedition of Teutonic Knights

Teutonic Knights

The Order of Brothers of the German House of Saint Mary in Jerusalem , commonly the Teutonic Order , is a German medieval military order, in modern times a purely religious Catholic order...

 and other crusaders

Northern Crusades

The Northern Crusades or Baltic Crusades were crusades undertaken by the Christian kings of Denmark and Sweden, the German Livonian and Teutonic military orders, and their allies against the pagan peoples of Northern Europe around the southern and eastern shores of the Baltic Sea...

 founded an earth-and-timber castle on the Neman River, opposite the ruins of Christmemel

Christmemel

Christmemel was a frontier fortress of the Teutonic Knights on the banks of the Neman River. It was constructed of wood and earth between April 8 and 22, 1313, by Grand Master Karl von Trier...

 in 1337. In honor of Henry, the castle was given the German

German language

German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....

 name Bayerburg (also Bayersburg; ), meaning "Bavarian('s) Castle".

The castle was used as a base and supply depot for expeditions into central Lithuania or northward into Samogitia

Samogitia

Samogitia is one of the five ethnographic regions of Lithuania. It is located in northwestern Lithuania. Its largest city is Šiauliai/Šiaulē. The region has a long and distinct cultural history, reflected in the existence of the Samogitian dialect...

. A year later it was unsuccessfully besieged for 22 days by Gediminas of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania

Grand Duchy of Lithuania

The Grand Duchy of Lithuania was a European state from the 12th /13th century until 1569 and then as a constituent part of Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth until 1791 when Constitution of May 3, 1791 abolished it in favor of unitary state. It was founded by the Lithuanians, one of the polytheistic...

. As Gediminas died during a later siege of the castle in 1341, a local legend attests that the Gediminas Oak of the park complex is where the grand duke was mortally wounded. His sons eventually conquered the castle of Bayerburg after his death.

In the 16th century the castle belonged to King Sigismund II Augustus

Sigismund II Augustus

Sigismund II Augustus I was King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania, the only son of Sigismund I the Old, whom Sigismund II succeeded in 1548...

 of Poland. A new castle was built on the ruins of the old one by a German

Germans

The Germans are a Germanic ethnic group native to Central Europe. The English term Germans has referred to the German-speaking population of the Holy Roman Empire since the Late Middle Ages....

 knight, Krispin de Kirschenstein. The castle has since been rebuilt many times. The 18th century Polish owners of the Rudone estate, the family Olędzki (Olendzki) h. Rawicz (members of szlachta

Szlachta

The szlachta was a legally privileged noble class with origins in the Kingdom of Poland. It gained considerable institutional privileges during the 1333-1370 reign of Casimir the Great. In 1413, following a series of tentative personal unions between the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Kingdom of...

, general sejm

General sejm

The general sejm was the parliament of Poland for four centuries from the late 15th until the late 18th century.-Genesis:The power of early sejms grew during the period of Poland's fragmentation , when the power of individual rulers waned and that of various councils and wiece grew...

 and senate) commissioned Wawrzyniec Gucewicz with a renovation of the castle. The next owner, the Russian Prince Platon Zubov

Platon Zubov

Prince Platon Alexandrovich Zubov was the last of Catherine the Great's favourites and the most powerful man in Russian Empire during the last years of her reign....

, acquired the estate in the first half of the 19th century and his family transformed the castle yet again. Their architect was Cesare Anichini (Cezaris Anikinis). Today the building is an example of 19th century neo-Gothic architecture

Gothic Revival architecture

The Gothic Revival is an architectural movement that began in the 1740s in England...

. Its last private owners were Sofia Vaksel (a Zubov

Zubov

Zubov was a Russian noble family which rose to the highest offices of state in the 1790s, when Platon Zubov succeeded Count Orlov and Prince Potemkin as the favourite of Catherine II of Russia....

) and her Madeirian husband, José Carlos de Faria e Castro.

The original castle of Raudonė is the setting of an East Prussia

East Prussia

East Prussia is the main part of the region of Prussia along the southeastern Baltic Coast from the 13th century to the end of World War II in May 1945. From 1772–1829 and 1878–1945, the Province of East Prussia was part of the German state of Prussia. The capital city was Königsberg.East Prussia...

n legend

Legend

A legend is a narrative of human actions that are perceived both by teller and listeners to take place within human history and to possess certain qualities that give the tale verisimilitude...

known as Die weiße Jungfrau der Bayerburg ("The White Maiden of Bayerburg"). http://www.sagen.at/texte/sagen/russland/dieweissejungfrau.html