Kernavė

Kernavė was never a single castle but a defensive complex of five earthen hillfort mounds — piliakalniai — crowned with wooden fortifications on the high right-bank terrace of the river Neris, with a town spread below in the Pajauta valley. Most Lithuanian settlements raised one hillfort; Kernavė held five, a measure of its strategic weight. The names they now carry — Pilies, Aukuro, Mindaugo, Lizdeikos and Kriveikiškio hills — were chosen in the 19th century. On Aukuro hill stood a strongly fortified ducal residence, screened by outworks on the Lizdeikos and Mindaugo hills, with a fortified bailey, the Upper Town, on Pilies hill. The defences ran older than the mounds' medieval timber: Kernavė has the oldest known medgrinda, a secret underwater road paved with wood, laid between the fourth and seventh centuries and used for defence.

By the 13th century the settlement had grown into one of the first Lithuanian towns and one of the emerging state's chief economic, political and defensive centres. There is a hypothesis that Mindaugas kept his capital here in the mid-13th century; the town's great flowering came after his death, under Traidenis and Vytenis, and it remained a residence of the rulers until 1321 — which is why Kernavė is often called the first capital of Lithuania. At its height the town filled the Pajauta valley and the upper terrace with craftsmen's and merchants' quarters laid out along a fairly regular street grid, and may have held three to four thousand people.

Kernavė enters the written record in 1279, when, as the seat of Grand Duke Traidenis, it was besieged by the Teutonic Knights — an operation recorded in the Livonian Rhymed Chronicle and repeated by Hermann von Wartberge. The town's merchants Remeišis and Studila, noted in the Riga debt book in 1290 and 1303, are the earliest Lithuanian traders known to history by name.

The knights returned in force. In 1365, at the Battle of Kernavė, the crusaders burned the castle complex; the town briefly recovered. Then in 1390, during the Lithuanian Civil War of 1389–1392, the Order struck again and the town and its buildings in the Pajauta valley, castle included, went up in flames — by one account fired by the retreating defenders themselves so that the wooden strongholds would not fall into the knights' hands. The town was never rebuilt. The remaining inhabitants abandoned the valley for the top of the terrace, and the old city passed out of use for good.

After the death of Vygantas in 1392 the surrounding lands became a grand-ducal manor, its house standing east of the present town. In the early 15th century Grand Duke Vytautas wrote letters from Kernavė to the grand master of the Teutonic Order, and the first church, funded by Vytautas, was built by 1430 — sited on the upper terrace, well away from the ruined city. Kristinas Astikas of Kernavė, a descendant of Traidenis's line, received the Trumpets coat of arms at Horodło in 1413, and his Astikas descendants were among the families who held the manor after him.

The new town gathered around church and manor. Sigismund Augustus granted it Magdeburg rights in 1571; in 1613 Kernavė was marked on the celebrated map of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania printed in Amsterdam and financed by Mikołaj Krzysztof "the Orphan" Radziwiłł; and in 1792 Stanisław August renewed the town rights and granted a coat of arms. Within a few years the Commonwealth had been partitioned, and the Russian imperial administration abolished the town's self-government.

In the abandoned valley an alluvial layer of wet peat sealed the remains of the medieval city, preserving most of the relics intact — a state of preservation that has led some to call Kernavė the "Troy of Lithuania". Interest revived in the Romantic era after Feliks Bernatowicz set his 1826 novel Pajauta, Daughter of Lizdeika here; the Tyszkiewicz brothers soon excavated the hillforts, followed by Władysław Syrokomla in 1859. Systematic work resumed with Vilnius University's excavations from 1979 and the Lithuanian Institute of History's campaigns of 1980–1983, and finds from the Kriveikiškis cemetery — hollow silver rings with raised swastika ornament, filigree rings set with glass eyes — testify to the wealth of the vanished town. A Lithuanian state cultural reserve now protects the site, and in 2004 the Kernavė Archaeological Site was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage list.