The old vault

You are now in one of the most important places in the building, the old vault. Truth be told, this is not the main vault but a private one where the Bank of Lithuania’s customers could keep their money and other valuables. The 90-square metre individual vault contains 748 safe-deposit boxes. There are rooms in the vault traditionally called cells, each of them containing safes locked with two keys (one of which was given to the customer and the other remained at the bank). The wealthiest in Kaunas at the time used to hold their valuables and important documents here. Interestingly, the balcony situated over the safes was also rented. When the ladies from Kaunas were going away for the summer, they would bring their expensive fur coats, evening gowns and valuable paintings here for safekeeping. It is said that the paintings of M. K. Čiurlionis were hidden here during the war, and they would have been very safe here since the vault’s doors, made by the English company Milners, weighed 3 tonnes and were locked by 3 different keys, all kept separately by three of the bank’s employees. Milners was the largest safety equipment producer worldwide, for example, the Titanic had a number of Milners-produced safes on-board.