The Hill of Crosses

The Hill of Crosses, where people not only from Lithuania have put crosses for couple centuries, witnesses faithfulness and trust of a Christian community to Christ and his Cross. This is an expression of a spontaneous religiousness of the people, and is a symbol not of grief and death but of Faith, Love and Sacrifice. From here the Pope blessed all people of Lithuania and all of Christian Europe.

It is hard to imagine so many crosses in one place. But all these crosses tell us about personal and public misfortunes and catastrophes. For example one cross was put after the wreck of the ferry “Estonia”.

The crosses were first counted by Ksywicki in 1900. In historical chronicles he wrote that there were 130 crosses on the hill. Two years later there were already 155 crosses. After the Word War I, in 1922 there were 50 crosses but in 1938 – already over 400. In 1961 the Soviet government demolished over 5000 crosses, by 1975 – 1200 crosses more.

After the political change the crosses were counted by enthusiasts from Šiauliai. They found 14 387 big crosses (1 112 from them were 3-4 meters high, 130 even higher) and about 41 000 small crosses (smaller than 0.5 meters).

Each visitor tries to leave a cross or a rosary. If he has not brought any, he makes one right on the hill, from pebbles, little branches or grass.