Place:Kernavė, Širvintos, Vilnius, Lithuania

source: Family History Library Catalog

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Kernavė was a medieval capital of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and today is a tourist attraction and an archeological site (population 272, 2011). It is located in the Širvintos district municipality located in southeast Lithuania. A Lithuanian state cultural reserve was established in Kernavė in 1989. In 2004 Kernavė Archaeological Site was included into UNESCO world heritage list.

History

the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

The area of Kernavė was sparsely inhabited at the end of the Paleolithic era, with the number of settlements significantly increasing in the Mesolithic and Neolithic eras.

According to Lithuanians, this was their first capital and symbol of state wood and pagan independence.

The town was first mentioned in 1279 in written sources, when, as the seat of the Grand Duke Traidenis, it was besieged by the Teutonic Knights. This military operation is mentioned in the Livonian Rhymed Chronicle (with the same passage repeated by Hermann von Wartberge in Cronicon Livoniale). In 1390, during the Lithuanian Civil War (1389–1392), the knights burned the town and its buildings in the Pajauta valley, including the castle. After this raid, the town wasn't rebuilt, and the remaining residents moved to the top of the hill instead of staying in the valley.

In later years, the remains of city were covered with an alluvial earth layer, that formed wet peat. It preserved most of the relics intact, and it is a treasure trove for archaeologists, leading some to call Kernavė the "Troy of Lithuania". For example, Kernavė has the oldest known medgrinda, a secret underwater road paved with wood. The road was used for defense and dates from the 4–7th centuries.

In 1613, the town was marked on a famous map of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania — Magni Ducatus Lithuaniae, et Regionum Adiacentium exacta Descriptio printed in Amsterdam and financed by the Lithuanian magnate Mikalojus Kristupas Radvila Našlaitėlis.

The site became the subject of wider interest again in the middle of 19th century, when a romantic writer, Feliks Bernatowicz, depicted the area in his novel "Pojata, córka Lizdejki" ("Pajauta, Daughter of Lizdeika", Warsaw, 1826). The hillforts were soon excavated by the Tyszkiewicz brothers and then by Władysław Syrokomla (1859). After World War II, the excavation works were restarted by Vilnius University in the 1979, and then again by the Lithuanian Institute of History between 1980–1983. The State Cultural Reserve of Kernavė was created in 2003.

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