The City Council of Vilnius has decided to name a garden square in the Old Town after Bona Sforza, the Italian-born Queen of Poland and Grand Duchess of Lithuania.
The 1,200-square-metre public garden is located outside the Palace of the Grand Dukes at the foot of the Gediminas Hill.
Rasa Baškienė, a city council member, said the move would also highlight Lithuania's links with Bari, the capital city of the Apulia region in southern Italy, where Sforza was buried.
In 2010, one of the streets in Bari was named Via Lituania, she noted.
“We have Italų (Italian) Street in Naujoji Vilnia, and streets named after Kings Sigismunds and Barbora Radvilaitė (Barbara Radziwill),” Baškienė said.
“However, we still have few signs commemorating the queen who was the first to memorialise Vytautas the Great in the Cathedral (of Vilnius), who carried out a reform of Lithuanian cities and towns, who restored the residential palace of Lithuanian rulers, and brought Italian culture to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania,” she added.
Vilnius Mayor Remigijus Šimašius welcomed the decision.
“Bona Sforza drew a lot of reproach because of Barbora Radvilaitė, her myth and her non-myth,” he said. “I think it's great that Vilnius will commemorate Bona Sforza in a place that is most suitable for her.”
Sforza vehemently opposed the marriage of her son, Sigismund II Augustus (Žygimantas Augustas), to Barbara Radziwill, known in Lithuania as Barbora Radvilaitė, daughter of an influential Lithuanian magnate family.
Gediminas Jaunius, head of the municipal Historical Memory Commission, confirmed that the panel will soon propose to name a street in Vilnius after Bari.
Bona Sforza (1494-1557), a member of the powerful House of Sforza and the second wife of Sigismund I the Old, is best known for carrying out the Volok land reform in the Grand Duchy and promoting the European Renaissance culture in Lithuania. She is regarded as the founder of modern Polish and Lithuanian cuisines.
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