Nida Harbour
You start where Nida has always looked: at the water. The harbour lies in the south of the village, on the ground of the old fishing hamlet of Atragis, the oldest part of Nida. Look at the streets behind you and you will notice how regular they are; this quarter has kept its strict rectangular plan and its even row of houses better than any other part of town.
A fishing harbour was laid out here at the end of the 19th century, and later a landing stage for steamboats followed. The Soviet years were harder on the place: to expand the fishing base, a hotel, the customs buildings and part of the old fishermen's homesteads were torn down, leaving the harbour with its fishing pier and a fish processing yard. The passenger harbour grew from 1975 and 1976, when a new pier went up beside the fishing port, and in 1991 a second mole closed the basin for passenger boats.
Today there are two piers, the fishing pier, which was once the passenger pier, and the passenger pier for ferries and pleasure boats. In 1999 Nida became an international inland port with its own border control point. Watch the ends of the moles: a red navigation light shines from the eastern one, a green light from the western one. Up to 60 yachts can moor here at once, and in July 2023 a new slipway for launching and lifting boats was finished.
Sailors know the name for another reason. In 2021 the harbour hosted the Platu 25 world championship, the first world sailing championship recognised by the international sailing federation ever held in Lithuania.
From here it is only 240 m, 3 min, to the homestead, the kind of house the people from these boats once lived in.
