Flag of Lithuania

How to read it

Article 15 of the constitution of 1992 says the colours of the state flag are yellow, green and red, and leaves the flag and its use to law. The flag is 3 by 5: the Seimas restored these older proportions on 8 July 2004, replacing the 1:2 taken over from Soviet flags in 1989, VLE says. A commission of Jonas Basanavičius, Tadas Daugirdas and Antanas Žmuidzinavičius proposed the tricolour, and the Council of Lithuania approved it unanimously on 25 April 1918. It was replaced by the Soviet red flag in 1940, raised again on Gediminas Tower in Vilnius on 7 October 1988, and made the state flag again on 18 November 1988.

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Colours from folk dress

In 1917 Basanavičius proposed a white knight on red, which he held to be Lithuania’s oldest flag, but many thought the Grand Duchy’s flag unsuited to a national flag, and too hard to sew. The founders chose colours from folk dress, the sashes and aprons. Red and green were found most often, and Daugirdas proposed a narrow light yellow stripe between them: green for the forests and meadows, yellow for the dawn and red for clouds lit by the sun, VLE says. The Seimas made 1 January Lithuanian Flag Day in 1997, for the day in 1919 when the tricolour flew from Gediminas Tower after the German withdrawal.

The historical state flag

Since 8 July 2004 the law has also recognised a historical state flag: on red, a silver armoured knight on a white horse, raising a silver sword above his head, with a blue shield bearing a gold double cross on his shoulder. Its model is the banners of the Grand Duchy’s army at the Battle of Grunwald (Žalgiris) in 1410, VLE says, and it is meant to fly permanently over the Palace of the Grand Dukes in Vilnius, Trakai Castle and the War Museum garden in Kaunas. The knight is the Vytis, the arms of Lithuania. Store norske leksikon dates its use as a state flag to 2010.

Telling it from Myanmar’s and Bolivia’s flags

Myanmar’s flag has the same colours in the same order, yellow, green and red from the top, but with a white five-pointed star across them, and it is 2:3, Store norske leksikon says. Bolivia’s tricolour is red, yellow and green, as its constitution names them.