Vilnius

St. Anne's Church, a compact red-brick Gothic building near the Vilnia river dating to the early 16th century, is celebrated almost entirely for its facade — a composition assembled from reportedly thirty-three distinctly shaped bricks, no two alike, producing an intricacy of pointed arches and flame-like tracery unusual for a building this small. The most repeated story attached to it holds that Napoleon Bonaparte, passing through Vilnius during his 1812 Russian campaign, was so struck by the church that he wished he could carry it back to Paris in the palm of his hand — an anecdote impossible to verify with certainty but persistent enough to have become part of how the building is introduced to visitors today. Whatever its historical accuracy, the facade itself, viewed straight on from the small square in front, makes the claim easy to believe.

Paupys, on the Vilnia's opposite bank from Užupis, spent much of the 19th and early 20th centuries as a working industrial quarter — leather tanneries, breweries and small factories built in the same red-brick style found across the old town, but for production rather than worship or commerce. Over the past decade, developers have converted much of that industrial stock into apartments, offices, cafés and creative studios, a redevelopment that has given Vilnius a second riverside district distinct from Užupis's longer-established bohemian identity — quieter, more residential, and worth a wander for visitors interested in how the capital is reusing its own industrial past rather than only its medieval one.