From the 14th century the area of Jurbarkas was a royal holding given by the Lithuanian rulers to their wives: queens Bona Sforza, Cecilia Renata and Marie Louise Gonzaga.

He and his wife Dorota (1682-1755) were bestowed with perpetual rights to govern the lands of Jurbarkas and Virbalis, which was followed by various disagreements over power.

Wars of the first half of the 18th century, ceaseless movements and deployments of armies continued to destroy the town.After the fall of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Russian Empress Catherine the Great gave Jurbarkas to Count Platon Zubov.

It was probably during Zubov’s time that the stone two-storey Neoclassical mansion with single-storey side risalites was built.

[4][5] In 1796, after the death of Catherine the Great and the ascension of Tsar Paul I, Platon Zubov was relieved of all his posts, stripped of his estates and exiled to Germany.

Vassiltchikov encircled the estate with a high red brick wall (fragments and gate posts still survive), and two stone servants’ quarters were built (or rebuilt).

Although Ilarion Vassiltchikov and his wife Yekaterina (1818-1869) used to come to Jurbarkas from St. Petersburg only in summer, they took good care of the estate.

Of all the Vasilchikovs, Sergei was the most important person in terms of modernization of the manor, management of the town of Jurbakas and the development of education and culture in the area.

The Vassiltchikov dukes did not resist the Lithuanian National Revival Movement which began in the early 20th century.

On November 2, 1905, they allowed the first Lithuanian culture event in Jurbarkas - the staging of the comedy “Americka pirtyje” (“America in a Bathhouse”) written by brothers Antanas and Juozas Vilkutaičiai, known by the nickname ‘Keturakis’, and staged by lawyer Skirgailienė - to be organized in the barn of the manor.

The border of the Empire was only 10 km from Jurbarkas and so the Vassiltchikov family moved to Petrograd (modern-day St. Petersburg).

When the German army reached Jurbarkas, learning that the manor house belonged  to an enemy commander, they immediately burned it down.

[5] Because the Vassiltchikov family lost their income from Jurbarkas they became, according to son George “impoverished émigrés” in France.

Soon after the Red Army arrived in Lithuania, Lidiya Leonidovna and her son George left for Berlin.

[12] At the beginning of World War II, Marie Vassiltchikov ended up in Germany, where she got a job in the Information Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Marie’s sister, Tatiana Vassiltchikov was married to German aristocrat Paul Alfons von Metternich-Winneburg, a famous figure in international motor sports.

[13][8] Once the greater part of Schloss Johannesburg had been rebuilt after the war, Tatiana and Paul made it their permanent home.

Since the beginning of the 1990s, then a German citizen, Tatyana Metternich regularly visited St. Petersburg, where she conducted extensive charity work.

In the autumn of 1942, he moved to France and, soon after, became involved in Resistance activities, which continued until the liberation of Paris in August 1944.

[10] The manor house itself, built in the Russian Empire style with columns and two wings, was approximately 50 m long and 15 m wide.

Jurbarkas Manor is surrounded by a mixed park, which runs along the Mituva River and covers an area of thirty hectares.

Maple, linden, birch, oak, bark, larch and other tree species grow in the territory of the manor.

Adjacent to it is the church – an example of Byzantine architecture reminding visitors that the Vasilchikovs were of Russian origin who professed Orthodoxy.