The history of the hill is deeply rooted in pre-Christian times. Until the 14th century the castle Jurgaičiai stood here. The Lithuanians, at that time the last pagan people of Europe, defended themselves against the bloody Eastern Crusades of the Teutonic Order and its Livonian sword brothers - in vain, in the end. The castle is said to have been destroyed in 1348, but the hill survived as a mythical sanctuary. When the Lithuanians twice rose up against tsarist foreign rule in the 19th century and the uprisings were bloodily crushed, inhabitants of surrounding villages erected memorial crosses on the hill for their dead relatives. The crosses were removed several times after the Soviet occupation of Lithuania in 1940, most recently in 1975, but Mikhail Gorbachev had the hill added to the list of Lithuanian national monuments during the Perestroika period. In 2008, the Lithuanian cross carving (Lithuanian: Kryždirbystė) was declared an intangible world cultural heritage site by UNESCO. The coin shows a variety of different crosses, covered columns (Lithuanian: Stogastulpis) and on the left a sculpture of Casimir, the patron saint of Lithuania. On the lower right, the knight Vytis ("the pursuer"), according to the coat of arms of Lithuania. The steps of the stairs are overlaid by a crescent moon cross. The crescent moon, an ancient pagan symbol, was associated with the female cycle of the month. In the Christian context, the whiteness of the moon represents innocence and symbolises in particular the Virgin Mary - in Vilnius, the icon of Mary, which is considered an image of grace, has been adorned in the Gate of Dawn since 1849 with a silver crescent moon, a votive gift. |
