Kernavė Archaeological Site Museum is the ideal starting point for exploring one of Lithuania’s richest cultural landscapes. Located around 35 kilometres northwest of Vilnius in the Neris River valley, the museum connects archaeological objects with the hill forts, settlement remains and burial sites outside. Its displays help visitors understand how people adapted to this landscape from the late Palaeolithic period through the Middle Ages.
UNESCO describes Kernavė as exceptional evidence of roughly ten millennia of human settlement. The protected landscape covers 194.4 hectares and contains five impressive hill forts, unfortified settlements and cemeteries. By the thirteenth century Kernavė had developed into an important feudal town of craftspeople and merchants. The medieval town was destroyed by the Teutonic Order late in the fourteenth century, and later settlement shifted north, helping to preserve archaeological layers beneath the ground.