of Plungė in the early 20th century It is thought that the territory where Plungė is situated was inhabited in 5th–1st centuries BC. After the
Treaty of Melno, county seats were established in the forests of
Samogitia. From the 14th century to the middle of the 16th century, Plungė was part of the
Gandinga district as an ordinary settlement. Later, the population of Plungė started to grow faster and surpassed the population of Gandinga. In 1567 Plungė was first mentioned as a town. It was located in the
Duchy of Samogitia in the
Grand Duchy of Lithuania within the
Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. On January 13, 1792, Plungė was granted
Magdeburg rights. From 1806 to 1873 Plungė belonged to
Platon Zubov, and later – to the
Ogiński family, who built a
palace here in 1879. in Plungė in 1930 During the interwar period a gymnasium was established in 1925, and a railway branch-line was built in 1932. In 1933, the current Catholic Church was consecrated. Since the private hospital was founded in 1939, maternity and surgical sections started operations in the city.
Lithuanian Jews were active in the town's government and comprised around half of Plungė's inhabitants leading up to
the Holocaust in Lithuania. During the 1941
June Uprising in Lithuania and the German invasion as part of
Operation Barbarossa, Plungė was captured by German forces on 25 June 1941. seized control and formed a town administration and police force. German forces killed 60 young Jewish men, accused by the Lithuanians of being a rear guard for the Red Army, shortly after the town's capture. On 26 June 1941, the day after the Germans' arrival in Plungė, Lithuanian forces moved the town's Jews into a makeshift
ghetto, while carrying out beatings, torture, murders and forcing Jews to perform heavy labor. On 13 or 15 July in the
Plungė massacre, the Lithuanian nationalists transported Jewish men, women and children to ditches near the village of Kausenai where they were shot. Of the 1,700 Jews living in Plungė in 1939, very few survived and often those who were victims of the
Soviet deportations from Lithuania prior to the Holocaust. Remembrance sites for the events of 1941 exist in and around the town. The Jewish holocaust survivor and sculptor
Jacob Bunka was one of the town's few Jews to survive the war. During the
interwar period, the years of the independence of Lithuania, Plungė's economy was based on the factory of fibre flax and cotton
Kučiskis – Pabedinskiai and also on the activities of Jewish businessmen and agricultural products made by Samogitian farmers. vehicles in Plungė in 1991, later the Soviet troops were withdrawn from Lithuania until 1993 After World War II and the Soviet occupation, Plungė started to grow rapidly – the city had 7,400 inhabitants in 1950, and by 1990 it had around 23,300 inhabitants. During the years of Soviet occupation, Lithuanians became the majority of the city's inhabitants. According to the Government's Resolution of 1963, Plungė was to become a regional centre with a strong industry. However, these plans didn't come to fruition as it became obvious that the city did not have enough water resources, although some companies were established in Plungė. However, most of these companies bankrupted after the independence of Lithuania was announced. The coat of arms of Plungė was affirmed by the decree of the President on June 6, 1997. In 2009 Plungė was elected
Lithuanian Capital of Culture. Nowadays Plungė is the sixteenth largest city of
Lithuania having 22,287 inhabitants.
Name The origin of the name
Plungė is not clear. The most likely theory is that its name comes from the river
Paplunga which flowed through the city. The city's name is Płungiany in Polish, Plongė in Samogitian, and Plungyan (פלונגיאן) in Yiddish. It was also known as Плунгяны (Plungyany) in Russian in the past. == Main sights ==