Elektrėnai Cooling Towers

The Elektrėnai power plant was built in the 1960s as the Soviet Union's answer to Lithuania's growing energy needs. Its enormous cooling towers — hyperbolic concrete structures rising over 100 meters — dominate the flat central Lithuanian landscape and are visible from tens of kilometers away. The plant and its purpose-built workers' town of Elektrėnai represent a distinctive chapter in Soviet industrial planning. While the plant is still partially operational, some of its older infrastructure has been decommissioned, creating a fascinating zone of semi-industrial landscape. The contrast between the massive industrial structures and the surrounding Lithuanian countryside — lakes, forests, and farmland — is striking and somewhat surreal. The artificial lake created to cool the plant has become a wildlife habitat.