In 1387, Vladislovas Jogaila established the first parish church of St John the Baptist in Vilnius. The name of the church was not accidental, but a direct reminder of the missionary tasks of the priests serving there. The building was erected close to the castle and the cathedral, which was being built at the same time, on a square that originally served as a shopping centre. Trade routes crossed the square in front of St John the Baptist Church. The growth of the town meant that the centre very quickly moved further south, to the area of today's market square with the town hall.

The oldest part of the church is the polygonal closed presbytery, which may have been built as early as the end of the 14th century. A towerless, three-nave hall was erected in a further phase until 1427, when it was consecrated. In the second half of the 15th century, the chancel of the church was demolished to build a new, longer one with a hall-like enclosure. As a result, a monumental building of considerable size was achieved, proudly testifying to the financial possibilities of Vilnius residents. After the situation with the Teutonic Knights stabilised, the navigable Lithuanian rivers were freed. Thanks to its location, Lithuania was able to meet foreign demand for grain, timber, tar and other forest products.

Jesuits

A new chapter in the history of the Church of St John the Baptist was brought by the early Counter-Reformation, when Valerian Protasevičius, Bishop of Vilnius, wishing to counteract the strong Protestant currents in Vilnius, brought in the Jesuits in 1569, for whom the city of Orthodox churches and churches was a bridgehead for their further march to the East. The monks were given custody of the Church of St John the Baptist, which became the centre of congregational life in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania (the transfer was approved by Sigismund Augustus in 1571). The temple was renovated by them, and chapels began to be built between the Gothic scarps, mainly tomb chapels, but also chapels associated with the city guilds (including the St Barbara Chapel of the Vilnius goldsmiths). The Jesuits organised a college at the temple in 1570, which Stefan Batory transformed into the Academy nine years later. It became the predecessor of today's Vilnius University, one of the oldest in this part of Europe.

The first rector of the Vilnius Academy for only a few months was Jakub Wujek, translator of the Bible into Polish, soon replaced by the famous preacher Piotr Skarga, who became the proper organiser of the university. At the beginning of the 17th century, another Jesuit, Paweł Boksza, an amateur architect, designed the first modern façade of the Church of St John the Baptist, and the work was led by another monk, Jan Frankiewicz.

A Rococo gem

Further major changes were associated with a series of fires in Vilnius in the first half of the 18th century, after which the Jesuits commissioned Johann Christoph Glaubitz to rebuild the church. Working on the realisation in the 1840s-60s, the architect gave the Gothic, monumental building a truly Baroque-Rococo shape of high artistic value. Attention was paid to both elevations, from the Academy courtyard and from Castle Street. The first was given a two-storey, columnar, dynamic and chiaroscuro structure, and the second a light, elevated one with rococo decoration, visible in many views from various locations in Vilnius. The free-standing bell tower (68 m), rebuilt by Glaubitz after 1737, has a similarly important function in the cityscape. It is a five-storey building, square in plan, with a viewing terrace, dating back to the first quarter of the 17th century.

Glaubitz also designed the elaborate backdrop decoration of the chancel and precinct, consisting of a total of ten masonry and marbled altars with stuccoed figures and more set in the body of the church (destroyed in 1827, the figures moved to consoles by the pillars of the nave). They were created between 1744 and 1745. The architect's task was difficult, as the artistic form had to express the content of the church's vocation, the cult of the statue of Our Lady of Loretto and the function of the monastic temple - Jesuit and academic, but also parochial. The architect therefore proposed two rings of openwork altars, which he connected by a restless line, and wove into their structure diagonally set columns against a background of pilasters, which he planted on strong, bulging plinths. On the axis, they were flanked by the altar of Our Lady of Loretto and the main altar, where figures of St Johns were placed. In both cases the stucco decoration of the altars enters the vaulting (House of Loretto, Holy Trinity in the Clouds).

The temple was closed after the Second World War. Today it has a dual role: it is both a museum and a place of worship associated with the academic community of Vilnius University.