The old monument's fragments
Left broken at the base.
Guillaume Speurt from Vilnius, Lithuania — CC BY-SA 2.0 · Simonas stuopys — CC BY-SA 3.0 · Brian Toward from London, United Kingdom — CC0 · Brian Toward from London, United Kingdom — CC0
From Užupis over the Vilnia bridge and up the forest steps, or from Kalnai Park on the gentler side; twenty minutes in ordinary shoes.
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Three white crosses on a green hill, visible from everywhere in Vilnius: the monument stands on the Hill of Three Crosses in Kalnai Park, originally wooden from the seventeenth century in memory of Franciscan monks said to have been killed here, and rebuilt in concrete in 1916. Its Soviet chapter matters most: the Soviet authorities blew it up in 1950 and buried the rubble to deny any national or religious symbol — and the hill stood bare for forty years. In 1989, as the independence movement rose, it was rebuilt higher than before, and fragments of the old monument were left at its base exactly as they lay: you see them broken on the ground beneath the new crosses. It is climbed by steps and a wooded path from the Vilnia riverbank in twenty minutes, and the view from the platform is wider than Gediminas' Tower itself: the whole old town with the tower and cathedral in one frame, finest at sunset.
Left broken at the base.
Old town and tower in one frame.
Kalnų parkas, Vilnius