Švyturio Arena

Švyturio Arena in Klaipėda is not a place built for the game, but a space where the game fits when the city needs it. The arena opened in 2011, just in time for the European Basketball Championship, which brought the crowd and the lights to the Baltic coast. It is not the home of the town's football club. What the arena does house is a basketball team, BC Neptūnas, and sometimes a hockey squad, depending on what the floor can hold that week.

The interior is a conversion. The parquet comes up for the rink, the ice melts for the court, and the stage swings out for whoever pays the bill. The arena does not sleep through these nights; it wakes up for a concert or a conference or a boxing match. Football does not have a permanent place here, but neither does silence.

It is in the Baltija neighbourhood, near the Akropolis shopping mall, where the lights from the building spill onto the street. The address is Dubysos g. 10, though nobody walking past the entrance reads it aloud. The capacity changes with the event, which is the point of a convertible floor. For the championship games, the seats filled to 5,486. For a concert, the flow is different, and the number goes up. The arena does not keep a single record because it does not want to. It turns to whatever the city asks for, and when the night is over, the floor sleeps again until the next call comes in.