St Paraskeva's Orthodox Church, Vilnius

It was difficult choosing today's photo from our short break in Vilnius but in the end I settled for this night view because I took it without the aid of a tripod and by playing around with the settings. I hadn't really tried anything like this at night before so I was quite pleased with the result.

The church is St Paraskeva's Orthodox Church and in front are a number of stalls selling pictures and other souvenirs. It didn't seem specifically geared to Christmas unlike the other markets at the Town Hall and Cathedral Square although neither of these two were particularly large either. I don't think the Christmas markets in Vilnius ware as good as the ones in Riga and Tallinn which we have visited in previous years.

This is the most recent history of the church as taken from Wikipedia:-

The church was devastated during the World War II. Although it was renovated again, the Stalinist government didn't allow the Russian Orthodox Church to start holding its services there. At first, a Museum of Atheism was to be opened there, but in the end the church was turned into a gallery of Lithuanian folk art. The church was given back to the Orthodox Church only in 1990 and reconsecrated by Metropolitan Khrisostom the following year. Since then it has been an auxiliary church of the Cathedral of the Theotokos.