The Town Hall, standing in the main square of Vilnius and on the artery connecting the Gates of Dawn and the castle, is a statement of the austere - so-called revolutionary classicism of the Vilnius milieu, whose tone was set by Wawrzyniec Gucewicz, who came from a Lithuanian peasant family. He was one of the most prominent architects of the declining Republic.

On 19 June 1781, the tower of the old town hall collapsed, destroying the building. The city council then decided to hold a competition for its reconstruction under the patronage of the Treasury Commission, Bishop Ignacy Massalski and Joachim Litawor Chreptowicz, the then Lithuanian sub-chancellor. A commission of architects was also appointed, but one by one the proposals submitted were rejected. In August 1785, the Vilnius magistrate asked Wawrzyniec Gucewicz, whose earlier project had not been accepted by the commission, to undertake the conceptual work once again. The architect drew up at least three versions of the design and in February 1786 went to Warsaw to show them to Stanislaw August, as Vilnius was one of the royal cities. The monarch approved the last version of the project. Construction of the Town Hall began immediately and continued until 1789. After a hiatus of several years, it was resumed in 1797. The Town Hall was completed after Gucevičius' death under the direction of architect Michał Szulc, who tried to realise the intention of his great predecessor.

The Vilnius Town Hall is a square-shaped, towerless and two-storey building. Characteristically, the tower - a sign of the city authorities and their headquarters - was omitted from its mass. Instead, the architect introduced a motif of strong, austere columns in the prominent protruding portico. In arranging the square in front of the town hall, Gucevičius thus arranged the agora, referring to Greek ideals. The removal of the buildings in front of the town hall in order to create free space for the monumental building allowed for better exposure of the building. The architect thus achieved monumentalism and austerity.

The Vilnius Town Hall is characterised by great economy. Almost half of its walls are walls adapted from the old Town Hall, to which a tract intended for the tribunal courts was added. On the ground floor, the architect placed a large hallway, 13 stalls, a storehouse for fire tools, as well as a cordegarden and a prison accessible from the portico. On the first floor, Gucevičius designed a room for the tribunal courts from the front: a vestibule and a meeting room divided by columns into 3 parts (this room is covered with barrel and cross vaults). He connected further rooms and two small staircases with it compositionally and functionally. The representative part of the town hall was located on the first floor. Gucevičius also introduced a colonnade in the main hall and covered its interior with domed canopies.

The bold contrast between the austerely designed volumes indicates the architect's links with the most avant-garde achievements of European architecture from the circle of French revolutionary artists. Gucewicz became acquainted with their works from autopsy, travelling around Europe. Particularly noteworthy is the great moderation of the town hall's architecture, achieved through considerable austerity of detail.

The Town Hall was held in high esteem from the very beginning and soon began to play various other roles. In 1845, a Polish theatre was set up in the Town Hall, where the Vilnius premiere of Stanisław Moniuszko's Halka (a two-act play) took place in 1854. The theatre, taken over by the Russian authorities after the January Uprising, was located here until 1924. After World War II, the building housed the Museum of Fine Arts, with canvases by Jan Rustem, Ferdinand Ruszczyc and Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis (Mikalojus Konstantinas Czurlanis), among others. Today it has a representative function, and the shape of the square, the low-rise buildings next to the monumental building of the town hall and the Baroque churches next door, make this part of the city unusual.