Which Vilnius citizen is most famous in the World? Oginski, Dzerzhinsky or Zappa?

From a contemporary point of view it sometimes seems that the monument to Frank Zappa, who has never visited Vilnius, has spread Vilnius’ name furthest afield.

In recent Soviet times, the most famous person from Vilnius was Felix Dzerzhinsky, the most famous KGB member and the founder of the Bolshevik secret police Cheka, the predecessor of the KGB. Even Vilnius University was going to be renamed after him. Dzerzhinsky attended school and started terrorist activity in Vilnius, his mother is buried in a Bernardine cemetery. But today even Russia would gladly forget Iron Felix, and would prefer to celebrate another famous Vilnius person Pyotr Stolypin, a Russian reformer of the beginning of the 20th c. To the Polish the most distinguished person from Vilnius is Józef Piłsudski, and also the romantic Vilnius poets of 19th century Adam Mickiewicz and Juliusz Słowacki, both highly esteemed by Piłsudski. Undoubtedly, to the Jewish population, the most famous person is the Gaon of Vilnius, and Lithuanians would probably name the artist and composer Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis as most famed Vilnius person.

Still, probably the most prominent person directly connected to Vilnius is composer and public figure Michael Kleofas Oginski. His famous Polonaise Farewell to the Homeland (a-moll nr. 13), was written in 1794. Oginski was one of the Lithuanian leaders of the uprising that defended the Constitution of May 3rd 1794, the turning point in the history of Lithuania and the Lithuanian Grand Duchy. The rebels lost, and Oginski had to flee his homeland and where he wrote his famous Polonaise. The composer became so renowned that he was buried at the Pantheon at Basilica Santa Croce in Florence, next to such luminaries like Michelangelo, Galileo, Machiavelli and Rossini.