Paths of glory

On July 6, 2003 a granite statue of Lithuania’s one and only crowned king, Mindaugas (1203-1263) was unveiled in front of the country’s National Museum in Vilnius. Reading these blogs last night, in particular Lizzie and Rhian’s enthused ravings about Victorian wall signs, I was reminded of my own interests in urban landscapes, with particular reference to a curious mass social incident that occurred as a direct result of the siting of the Mindaugas statue. Having lived high up in several vast concrete buildings in the past I’d become aware of the way urban planners provide paths and pavements for pedestrians that often fail to meet the pedestrians’ actual needs. As a result, almost the entire urban landscape of the world (or rather the bits of it that I’ve seen) is scarred willy nilly with muddy paths made by pedestrians who walk over grass to get to wherever it is they’re going just that little bit quicker. It therefore came as no great surprise to see that the planners who designed the new square around the Mindaugas statue in Vilnius had laid out a serious of new paths that looked nice but that were absurdly impractical. On a busy pedestrian route from the city centre to a bus stop, two of the fancy new paths radiating out from the statue went in the general direction of the aforementioned bus stop, albeit missing it by several metres on either side. Needless to say the locals were soon cutting a path of their own, which led straight to the bus stop, and which I duly took a picture of and immediately forgot all about it. Sometimes when I was thinking about these paths I wondered whether city councils ever took notice of this bizarre and rather charming form of anarchy by building solid pavements over the improvised tracks. What had until this point been little more than an amusing personal observation suddenly turned into a huge event (for me), when, a few weeks later, I discovered that the people at Vilnius municipality had done just that. I took another photograph. Mindaugas, who is generally believed to be the father of the founding of the Lithuanian state, led a fairly eventful life before being murdered by one of his friends, but for me the intriguing history of the tacit doings of a handful of 21st-century Lithuanians and their unconscious contributions to the urban landscape of their city is a far more interesting story indeed.