Tauragė Post Office Building Complex

Tauragė Post Office Building Complex is one of the oldest historical buildings in the city. The great fire of Tauragė (1836) took the post office building in the city centre and the construction of a new building complex in a new location commenced in 1840. It was located near Šiauliai-Tauragė road, which was a part of the route Tilsit-Riga, built in 1836-1844. The construction of the postal station took several stages. The part of the station complex, which survived to this day (2018), with the inn (1858-1861) was designed by the architect Slupskis.
The station hosted a postal service, a horse changing point with a carriage house, a hotel, an inn, a ‘clean’ (for the rich) and a ‘dirty’ resting hall (for the servants, rivers and postmen. A part of the postal buildings were destroyed during World War I and World War II, and some of them were rebuilt. In 1963, the post office building was expanded and acquired a second floor. Nevertheless, the façade still features distinct elements of the 19th c. architecture.
Out of the entire ensemble, the building that retained its look closest to the original is the inn building, built in 1860 near the court of the postal station. That is a simple rectangle, small, one-storey building – a typical example of wayside building architecture in the Tsarist Russia: simplified classic style, symmetric compositions, modest window décor and corner stones. The building currently hosts Šiauliai Bank.
On 10 October 2013, the town opened a memorial plate on the wall of the post office for Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850) to commemorate his visit in Tauragė. Honoré de Balzac stopped to have some rest and a meal for a half of a day at Tauragė Postal Station on 10 October 1843, returning from St. Petersburg to Paris by coach. While staying at the inn, he wrote a letter to his beloved widow Polish Duchess Eveline Hańska (1801-1882).
Tauragė Post Office went down into the history of European philately. On 1 June 2008, the Swiss city of Lugano hosted an auction, which featured a rich collection of Russian imperial post stamps and envelopes, which belonged to the philatelist Paolo Bianci. The most expensive item at the auction was the letter, marked with the first Russian post stamp, sent from Tauragė post office on 31 December 1857.

Compiled in 2018