The silver icon
Only face and hands left uncovered.
Kontis Šatūnas — Public domain · Diliff — CC BY-SA 3.0 · Jerzy Strzelecki — CC BY-SA 3.0 · FrDr — CC BY-SA 4.0
Yes, and it is the best order: up Aušros Vartų from the gate to Town Hall Square, then Pilies street to Cathedral Square — one kilometre through the city's finest.
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The last of Vilnius's city gates and Lithuania's holiest shrine: the sixteenth-century wall had nine gates and the Russians demolished them all but this one — spared because a chapel above it holds the icon of Our Lady of the Gate of Dawn, a seventeenth-century painting clad in gilded silver except for the face and hands. The icon is a pilgrimage for Catholics and Orthodox alike — rare in Europe — and the chapel walls are covered with thousands of votive silver plaques shaped as hearts and limbs, left by those who were healed. Pope John Paul II visited and prayed here in 1993. The chapel is entered by a stair from the street, and passers-by beneath the gate remove their hats and cross themselves. From here Aušros Vartų street climbs into the old town's heart between churches — the finest walking entrance into old Vilnius.
Only face and hands left uncovered.
Thousands of silver hearts on the walls.
Aušros Vartų g. 14, Vilnius