History of Nida

In 1939 the town had 736 inhabitants.

Nida became nearly uninhabited, like all of the Curonian Spit, as a result of the evacuation of East Prussia during World War II. The town was returned to the Lithuanian SFSR within the Soviet Union by the 1945 Potsdam Agreement, and today (since 1990) is part of independent Lithuania.

Nida was a little-visited fishing village in the post-war period. Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir went to Nida during their stay in Lithuania in summer 1965. In the 1970s, together with three other villages of Neringa municipality (Juodkrantė, Preila and Pervalka), it was reserved as an invitation-only holiday resort with controlled entry regime and accommodation reserved almost exclusively for the Communist party nomenklatura and senior government and industry elite. Thanks to the very strict planning regulations, a ban on any industrial development and more generous municipal subsidies, it remained an unspoilt and clean territory. Today, the number of visitors is kept small by a low number of available hotel rooms (as new developments are limited, and are usually permitted only on already existing old buildings foundations), relatively high accommodation prices, ferry tolls and entry pass costs