Zypliai Manor

In 1806, the old Zypliai Manor was appointed to the Duke Juozapas Poniatovskis (Józef Poniatowski) for his merits in the war in Napoleon’s army. After his death in 1813, his sister Marija Teresė Tiškevičienė (Tyszkiewicz) became the landlord of the manor, but she did not visit Zypliai as she lived in Paris and soon sold the estate to Jonas Bartkovskis, a landlord of the Polotsk province.

In the manor named Zypliai, Jonas Bartkovskis built a one-storey brick palace of Classicist style, two oficinas, a kitchen and wooden outbuildings. In 1855, after the death of Jonas Bartkovskis, the manor went to his step daughter and later to his daughter, who sold Zypliai to the Count Tomas Potockis (Tomasz Potocki). Then, at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries, the palace was rebuilt and acquired some features of neo-Baroque.

After the war, Zypliai Manor housed the headquarters of various organisations. In 1919, a priest seminary was moved here and operated until 1922. From 1924 to 1944, there was a lower agricultural school at the manor where J. S. Banaitis, son of Saliamonas Banaitis, the signatory of the Independence Act, was the director and administrator of the Zypliai Manor.

In 1944, a military hospital was established in Zypliai Manor house, in 1945 a county hospital and later other organisations started operating here, and eventually the palace remained largely unused and eventually deteriorated.

Vidas Cikana, a sculptor who moved to Lukšiai in 1981, started taking care of the manor buildings that belonged to the collective farm. After the restoration of Lithuanian independence in 1990, Cikana, who was elected as the elder of the town, arranged for the Zypliai Manor buildings to be transferred to the Lukšiai Eldership and initiated the reconstruction and restoration of the manor and the park, as well as cultural activities that still take place today, at the well-maintained manor that has regained its past magnificence.