Hill of Crosses and Jelgava day trip from Riga

The Hill of Crosses is a Lithuanian pilgrimage site the Soviet army bulldozed at least three times – and each time, Lithuanians rebuilt it under cover of night, until the hill held an estimated 100,000 crosses and a visit from Pope John Paul II.

A hill the Soviets couldn't clear

The tradition of leaving crosses on this former hill fort near Šiauliai is thought to date back to the aftermath of an 1831 uprising against Russian imperial rule, when families unable to locate the bodies of fallen rebels began placing symbolic crosses there instead. It grew into a quiet act of religious and national defiance once Lithuania fell under Soviet occupation in 1944: the KGB recognised exactly what the hill represented and tried repeatedly to erase it, bulldozing the site at least three times. On 5 April 1961, just three days after Easter, Soviet forces destroyed around 5,000 crosses in a single operation – burning the wooden ones, melting the metal ones, and banning anyone from placing new ones. Lithuanians kept bringing crosses back under cover of night anyway. By the time Lithuania regained independence in 1990, an estimated 55,000 crosses covered the hill; Pope John Paul II visited on 7 September 1993 and declared it a place of hope, peace, love and sacrifice, and by 2006 the count had grown to roughly 100,000. It's technically inside Lithuania, close enough to the border that Riga, not Vilnius, is the more common departure point for visiting it.

A Baroque palace on the way

The tour's other stop, Jelgava, holds the largest Baroque palace in the Baltic states – designed by Bartolomeo Rastrelli, the same architect behind Rundāle Palace roughly 40 kilometres away, both built as residences for the Dukes of Courland. Jelgava Palace was Rastrelli's winter commission for the dukes, a sprawling complex now home to Latvia University of Agriculture rather than open as a museum in its own right, but still visible from outside as a stop on the route back toward Riga.

Booking

The day trip from Riga runs about 7.5 hours by van with a live guide, crossing into Lithuania for free time at the Hill of Crosses before the Jelgava stop on the way back. It's a well-reviewed, frequently sold-out option, so book a day or two ahead.