From the valley of the Neris River, five steep hill forts rise above the small Lithuanian town of Kernavė. The view can suggest a medieval stronghold, but the archaeology reaches much further back: UNESCO describes evidence of human settlement here over roughly 10,000 years. The cultural reserve brings together the town, fortified and unfortified settlements, burial grounds and other monuments, making Kernavė a landscape to explore on foot as well as a story to read in the museum.
The World Heritage property covers 194.4 hectares about 35 kilometres northwest of Vilnius. Its archaeological layers include evidence from the late Palaeolithic through the Middle Ages; UNESCO notes that some of the earliest traces date to the ninth and eighth millennia BCE, followed by long periods of settlement. The five hill forts that dominate the landscape are principally associated with the thirteenth century, when Kernavė was an important feudal town whose craftspeople and merchants needed a strong defensive system.