The Hill of Crosses
Soviet authorities bulldozed this hill three times, burned the crosses, sold them for scrap, and dumped sewage over the site. Each time, people walked up at night past the guards and planted new ones. Estimates now run past 200,000. Nobody is buried here and no authority decides what may be planted.
Field Guide Entry
Nobody knows exactly when crosses started going up on this low mound in northern Lithuania. The usual account traces it to the 1831 uprising against Russian rule, when families with no bodies to bury put up crosses instead. It grew from there.
By 1961 the Soviet authorities had decided it was a problem. They sent in bulldozers, destroyed more than 5,000 crosses, burned the wooden ones and cut up the metal ones for scrap, and dumped waste and sewage on the site to discourage anyone from coming back. People came back within days, at night, past the guards, carrying crosses.
They did it again in 1973. They did it again in 1975, destroying roughly 1,200 more. It kept not working.
An unadministered place
A count in 1990 recorded 14,387 large crosses and 40,944 small ones hanging from them. Estimates now run past 200,000 and nobody attempts a serious count any more, because rosaries and small crosses are hung from larger crosses in layers.
The unusual thing about the hill is that no institution runs it. Nobody is buried there. No parish administers it. There is no committee that approves what goes up, no register of who planted what, and no removal policy. People bring a cross and put it in the ground, and it stays until it rots.
After 1991
John Paul II visited in September 1993 and a Franciscan monastery was consecrated a few hundred yards away on July 8, 2000. The hill itself was left as it was, which was the correct decision and not an obvious one.
Crosses continue to arrive faster than anyone counts them.
Visiting Information
Free and open at any hour, with a boardwalk running up to and through the mound. There is a paid car park at the base and a free one at the Franciscan monastery a short walk away, whose chapel is open daily 8am to 9pm, and 8am to 6:30pm in winter.
A stand at the entrance sells crosses for anyone who wants to leave one, which is what most visitors do.
The site is exposed and northern Lithuanian weather is the main practical consideration; the boardwalk gets slick and the wind comes straight across the fields. Siauliai is the nearest town, a short drive south. Early morning and late afternoon are much quieter than the middle of the day, when coaches arrive.
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