In the ground-floor room of the Vincas Kudirka Museum, the history of Kudirkos Naumiestis is presented. Iconographic material, maps and various objects relate the history of the town situated at the confluence of the Šešupė and the Širvinta Rivers. The visitors can also get acquainted with abundant iconographic material of the interwar period in digital format.
The exhibition also includes traditional Zanavykian costumes from the late 19th century, compiled from authentic exhibits and their replicas held in the collection of ethnographic costumes of the National Museum of Lithuania.
In the first-floor exhibition, the visitors find themselves in a kind of labyrinth and can walk the paths of history getting to know the period of book smuggling and the figures of the national rebirth movement of the second half of the 19th century, Varpininkai.
Special attention in the exhibition is devoted to Vincas Kudirka’s personality. The author of Tautiška giesmė and the ideological leader of the Varpas newspaper, Kudirka was in charge of its publishing for ten years until his death. Among the exhibits are: a prayer book published in Józef Zawadski’s printing house in 1863 and given by Kudirka to his landlady Petronėlė Krūzaitienė’s daughter Marija, manuscripts of books translated by Kudirka – Cain by George Gordon Byron and William Tell by Friedrich Schiller, and an album of photo reproductions of the series of drawings Lituania by artist A. Grottger dedicated to Petras and Celina Leonas. Three information portals offer the visitors a possibility to leaf through Kudirka’s manuscripts, periodical publications Varpas, Ūkininkas, Naujienos, and illegal copies of books transported through the border by book smugglers.