Trakai

Trakai lies among lakes west of Vilnius, in forest broken by islands and narrow necks of land, where the Lithuanian dukes built castles that no army could easily approach. The Teutonic Knights' chronicles name it for the first time in 1337. After Gediminas moved to Vilnius, his son Kęstutis took the duchy of Trakai, and the town became the seat of one of the most powerful men in the Grand Duchy. In 1382 Jogaila and Kęstutis met near the town, and Jogaila tricked and imprisoned his uncle, who died a few weeks later in captivity at Kreva.

Vytautas, Kęstutis's son, took Trakai with Teutonic help in 1383 and won it back by the Astrava agreement of 1392. He spent more time here than in Vilnius, and replaced the old wooden stronghold with a stone castle on the lake island. In 1397–98 he settled Karaite families from Crimea, who kept their own self-government, and in 1409 he gave the town Magdeburg rights and moved the state treasury and the Lithuanian Metrica here. Trakai became the seat of a voivodeship in 1413. After Vytautas its importance faded behind Vilnius, and the island castle served as a prison for political rivals; Sigismund I the Old refurbished it as a summer residence. In 1655 the Russian invasion left both castles in ruins.