On 6 September 2016, the Czeslaw Milosz staircase was unveiled in Vilnius. This unusual monument is located between Bokšto (Basztowa), Maironio (former St Anne's) and Onos Šimaitės streets. The staircase was named after the Nobel Prize winner by the Vilnius City Government in 2011. The place was chosen, in a way, thanks to a "hint" from Miłosz, who mentioned that it was the first Vilnius place he remembered from his youth.

The staircase consists of 60 steps, eight of which bear stanzas of Czesław Miłosz's poems in Polish and Lithuanian, and a plaque with information about the poet in Polish, Lithuanian and English was placed in the middle of the stairs. The inscription reads:

"Never from you, city, could I depart. It was a long mile, but it drew me back like a chess piece".

The signature of the Nobel laureate was carved on one of the steps.

In 2011, the staircase was badly damaged. To mark the 100th anniversary of Czesław Miłosz's birth (he was born in 1911), it was decided to renovate them and name them after the Nobel laureate. The project was organised by: Institute of Lithuanian Literature and Folklore, the organisation "Porta artis" with funds from the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage of the Republic of Poland, the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Lithuania, the Vilnius City Government in cooperation with the Polish Institute in Vilnius. The idea received a lot of support from local Poles and many intellectuals and writers. The project was initiated by journalist and reporter Ramunė Sakalauskaitė and columnist, journalist and "good Vilnius spirit" Pranas Morkus. A group of Lithuanian intellectuals were also involved, including the director of the Institute of Lithuanian Literature and Folklore doc. dr Mindaugas Kvietkauskas, who stated that Miłosz was a critical, free mind and traditional forms of commemoration did not suit him, literary scholar Prof. Viktorija Daujotytė, theatre scholar Prof. Irena Veisaitė, poet Tomas Venclova, and journalist Ramūnas Terleckas - they proposed to commemorate the Polish Nobel laureate in a non-traditional way.

The authors and executors of this project were architect Tauras Budzys and sculptor Jonas Gencevičius, who had already created a plaque commemorating Czesław Miłosz on the building of the Sigismund Augustus State Gymnasium in Vilnius, of which he was a student, in 2011.

The Vilnius staircase only received its restoration in 2016. To give the project publicity, a reading of the Nobel laureate's poems in Polish, Lithuanian, Estonian, French and Spanish was held in May this year.

It is worth mentioning that the Czesław Miłosz Stairs, commemorating the figure and work of the Polish Nobel laureate, were also opened on Poleski Boulevard, near the Manggha Museum of Japanese Art and Technology in Krakow. In a symbolic way, they link Kraków and Vilnius. This is the second such staircase in the world, after the Vilnius staircase. They were unveiled on 3 October 2019, the 15th anniversary of the poet's death.