Kėdainiai

Kėdainiai lies on the Nevėžis River, north of Kaunas. First recorded in the Livonian chronicle of Hermann of Wartberge in 1372, it became a town in 1590. Its squares and merchants' houses bear witness to a prosperous community in which Lithuanian nobles and immigrants from far beyond the Baltic made their homes.

Under the Radziwiłł family, Kėdainiai became a centre of the Reformed faith. Scottish Protestants arrived in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and their merchants became influential townsmen. The Calvinist church, built in 1631, contains the family mausoleum, including the tombs of Krzysztof Radziwiłł and his son Janusz. During the Swedish invasion of the Commonwealth, members of the family signed the short-lived Union of Kėdainiai with Sweden at their castle in 1655. The fighting of the Deluge reached the surrounding country, and the agreement did not survive the war.