Lithuania’s Lost Shtetl Museum ranked among seven most beautiful museums worldwide

The Jewish history museum The Lost Shtetl, opened last year in Šeduva, Lithuania, has been included in the 2026 list of the world’s most beautiful museums, announced by the international architecture and design awards Prix Versailles.

A decade in the making and only opened to visitors last year, the museum tells the story of a vanished world—the life and destruction of Lithuanian Jewish towns known as shtetls.

Prix Versailles is a global architecture and design award, announced this year on 4 May during a ceremonial event at UNESCO headquarters in Paris.

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This year’s list features seven museums from around the globe, with The Lost Shtetl appearing alongside projects from Abu Dhabi, Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Tokyo, Arlington, and Tashkent. It is also the first museum in the Baltic states to be included in this list.

The jury also highlighted the nearby Memory Park, a living memorial honouring the memory of Šeduva’s once-vibrant Jewish community.

Dr. Jolanta Mickutė, a specialist in Jewish history and head of the museum’s education department, said: “Within a relatively short time, we see that the museum is attracting attention not only from visitors in Lithuania and abroad, but also from the international professional community. Such recognition shows that the museum’s architecture, exhibition language, and the story it tells are understandable and impactful in a broader global context.”

The museum’s architectural concept was created by Finnish architect Rainer Mahlamäki in collaboration with landscape architects Enea Landscape Architecture. The concept is based on the silhouette of a shtetl, with the buildings roof tops resembling a small town.

The Lost Shtetl museum was established by the Switzerland-registered philanthropic organisation YouthAid Foundation and more than 30 companies from 8 countries contributed to the project.

Its exhibition spans ten galleries, beginning with an introductory film tracing the arrival of Jews to the territory of present-day Lithuania and their life here until World War I.

Zayed National Museum, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates; Museum of Science and Technology, Shenzhen, China; “Xuelei” Museum of Scents, Guangzhou, China; “MoN Takanawa: Museum of Narratives,” Tokyo, Japan; The Lost Shtetl Museum, Šeduva, Lithuania; National Medal of Honour Museum, Arlington, USA; Centre for Islamic Civilisation, Tashkent, Uzbekistan.