Virbalis

City

Coat of arms

Virbalis

Location of Virbalis

Coordinates: 54°38′0″N 22°49′0″E / 54.63333°N 22.81667°ECoordinates: 54°38′0″N 22°49′0″E / 54.63333°N 22.81667°E

Lithuania

Vilkaviškis district municipality

Eldership

Virbalis eldership

Capital of

Virbalis eldership

First mentioned

1529

Granted city rights

1593

Population (2005)

• Total

1,314

Time zone

EET (UTC+2)

• Summer (DST)

EEST (UTC+3)

Virbalis ( pronunciation , Polish: Wierzbołów, Yiddish: ווירבאלן‎ Virbalen) is a city in the Vilkaviškis district municipality, Lithuania. It is located 12 km (7.5 mi) west of Vilkaviškis.

It is frequently mentioned in historical as well in modern literature. It was the site of the formation of the Wierzbołów Confederation by Paweł Jan Sapieha in 1655 during the Deluge (part of the Second Northern War). Later it was the first station for stagecoaches and later the first railway station in the Russian Empire when leaving Germany.

When in 1861 a branch of the Saint Petersburg – Warsaw Railway was built from Vilnius to the Prussian border, where it was linked to the Prussian Eastern Railway, the Russian border station near the village of Kybartai was named after the neighbouring town of Verzhbolovo. Meanwhile, Kybartai has become a town bigger than Virbalis, and the Lithuanian border station is now called Kybartai, too. The German station of the Prussian Eastern Railway on the western side of the frontier was Eydtkuhnen; today it is the Russian border station and called Chernyshevskoye (Russian: Черныше́вское).

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Wikipedia