Hill of Crosses
Siauliai District, Lithuania
A devotional hill in Lithuania where people have planted crosses for two centuries, bulldozed by the KGB under Soviet rule and replanted at night, now holding over 100,000 crosses.
On an old hill fort near Siauliai, Lithuanians have planted crosses, crucifixes, statues of the Virgin Mary, rosaries and carvings for two centuries, a practice traditionally tied to the aftermath of the 1831 and 1863 uprisings against Russian rule, when families unable to recover the rebels' bodies raised symbolic crosses here. Under Soviet occupation the hill became an act of defiance: the KGB bulldozed it repeatedly, destroying thousands of crosses at a time and guarding the roads, and Lithuanians kept returning at night. Estimates ran to 55,000 crosses by 1990 and over 100,000 by 2006.
Pope John Paul II visited in 1993 and left a message of thanks for the hill's testimony to the faith of the Lithuanian people. A Franciscan hermitage opened nearby in 2000, Lithuanian cross-crafting is recognized by UNESCO as intangible cultural heritage, and the site is cared for by the Lithuanian Franciscan Province, drawing hundreds of thousands of visitors a year. It is folk devotion, not a church-commissioned monument, and it is unlike anything else in this library.
Visiting
The hill's own site carries directions; free entry, no barriers or posted hours, about twenty minutes' walk from the parking area over rough ground, about 12km north of Siauliai.
Photo: [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Colina_de_las_Cruces,_Lituania,_2012-08-09,_DD_12.JPG), CC BY-SA 3.0, Diego Delso.
Associated traditions & practices
Visitor stories