River · Lithuania
Neman
Neman, known in Lithuania as the Nemunas, is the country's longest river. It collects its water in Belarus and then flows north-west through Lithuania. At last it reaches the Curonian Lagoon on the Baltic Sea.
Picture credit: VietovesLt (CC BY 3.0) · Balictrails.eu (CC BY-SA 4.0) · Wikimedia Commons
Where is the Neman?
The river starts here: hill country of Belarus, south of Minsk.
It ends in the Curonian Lagoon, Baltic Sea.
Countries on the river: Lithuania.
The story behind it
For Lithuania the Neman works like a main road made of water. Rafts of timber once floated down it, and cargo boats still travel between Kaunas and the port of Klaipeda. Old castles stand on the banks at Kaunas and Raudone, built in a time when knights fought over the river crossings. Near the mouth the water spreads into the Nemunas Delta, a flat land of reeds, wet meadows and shallow channels. In spring the meltwater floods the fields, and geese, swans and cranes rest there on their long journey north. In winter the surface can freeze so hard that people walk across it. Books do not always agree on how long the river really is, because a large part of it lies outside Lithuania and the measurements differ.
Questions children ask
How long is the Neman?
The Neman is about 937 kilometres long in total. Roughly half of that stretch lies inside Lithuania. Different books give slightly different figures, because the river is measured in several countries.
Which country does the Neman flow through?
In this encyclopaedia the Neman is listed as the longest river of Lithuania. It crosses the country from the south-east to the coast. Its upper course lies in Belarus, where the water first gathers.
Where does the Neman flow into the sea?
The river ends in the Curonian Lagoon, a shallow bay of the Baltic Sea. Before that it splits into the many arms of the Nemunas Delta. Ships reach the open sea through the port of Klaipeda.
Where these numbers come from
Every figure on this page was checked against public reference sources before publication. Where sources genuinely disagree, the text says so.
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