ENLithuania, a central European country with a population of 2.8 million, is located on the eastern shore of the Baltic Sea, covering an area of 65,302 km2 (25,213 mi2). At the beginning of the fifteenth century, the territory of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania stretched from the Baltic to the Black Sea and was an important political power in Eastern and Central Europe until sixteenth century. Lithuania was occupied by tsarist and Soviet Russia regimes, but now has an emerging economy and tourism. [From the publication]