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The Butterfly Town: how Visaginas was planned

Visaginas (called Sniečkus until 1992) was designed so that its plan resembles a butterfly: a central “body” and four “wings” – residential districts. The fourth wing was never built.

Checked: 2026-09-24

Who designed the town

The town was built for the workers of the Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant. The architectural design of the town and most of its buildings came from Leningrad architects – Boris Loktev, Yuri Vuima and their colleagues at VNIIPIET, the energy engineering institute of the USSR Ministry of Medium Machine Building. According to the institute's archive, the authors were nominated for the USSR State Prize for the town's design but never received it because the Soviet Union collapsed.

How the “butterfly” works

The plan follows the butterfly principle: the main “body” is the town centre, surrounded by four “wings” – residential districts. Two crossing pedestrian alleys run through the centre, conceived as the town's main streets.

There are no private houses in Visaginas: the town stands in a forest on the shore of Lake Visaginas, and its apartment blocks are set right into the pine woods.

Why the butterfly is missing a wing

The fourth residential district was never built – its construction was halted together with the construction of Unit 3 of the Ignalina NPP. So today the “butterfly” has three wings out of the four that were planned.

Butterflies in the streets

The butterfly theme lives on in the town quest “Surask drugelį” (“Find the butterfly”): plaques with codes around town tell the story of the place where you stand. Visaginas360 is restoring these plaques – visaginas.app.

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