Short answers, pulled from the story.
Vilnius has been the capital of Lithuania since at least 1323, when Grand Duke Gediminas first mentioned it as such in a letter. The Lithuanian constitution describes it as the long-standing historical capital of the state.
Napoleon gave Vilnius the name "the Jerusalem of the North" when he passed through in 1812, recognizing the city's status as one of Europe's most important Jewish cultural and religious centres before World War II and the Holocaust.
Vilnian Baroque is an architectural style named after Vilnius itself. The city is the easternmost Baroque city and the largest such city north of the Alps. The style developed after disasters prompted reconstruction, with Italian artists from the Canton of Ticino among its key designers.
The Vilnius Historic Centre, covering about 3.6 km2, was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1994. It is considered one of Europe's largest and best-preserved old towns.
Vilnius-based companies produce over 50 percent of the world's ultrashort pulse lasers. A laser system built there in 2019 for the Extreme Light Infrastructure laboratory in Szeged generates peak power up to 1,000 times that of the most powerful nuclear power plant in the United States.
On the 13th of January 1991, Soviet troops attacked the State Radio and Television Building and the Vilnius TV Tower, killing 14 civilians. The Soviet Union had sent in troops on the 9th of January after Lithuania declared its intention to restore independence on the 11th of March 1990.