Metravel city quest
City Kreva: free walking route “Krevo Quest: The Walled-Up Bride” along the sights. 8 points. Approximately 1 h 30 min. Quests and legends - straight from your
This story has no happy ending — and that is exactly why people in Krevo have been telling it for the seventh century now.
When the grand dukes of Lithuania were building their first fully stone castle here, one of the walls simply refused to stand: no matter how much they laid, by morning the masonry had sagged and collapsed. And then, the legend says, the builders decided that the wall needed a sacrifice — to wall up alive the first girl who came to the castle. The first to arrive was the young wife of one of the builders himself. They walled her into the wall, and her little dog leapt to its mistress — and stayed with her in the masonry forever. Since then, the locals whisper, a ghost walks the castle at night: once she was a beauty with a little dog at her feet, but time spares even ghosts — now, they say, she is a hunched old woman in rags, with a little dog’s skeleton scurrying beside her.
Legend is legend, but even without it these walls have the grimmest biography imaginable. In 1382, on Jogaila’s orders, his own uncle, Grand Duke Kęstutis, was strangled in the castle. Kęstutis’s son Vytautas, the future grand duke, expected the same fate — and escaped from the tower disguised in a woman’s dress. And three years later, in 1385, the terms of the Union of Krevo were worked out here — the treaty that joined the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and Poland and redrew the map of all Eastern Europe. All of this happened right here, in an agro-town on seven hills where fewer than a thousand people live today.
You will walk through Krevo following the trail of this legend: from a church that survived a three-year front line, past a Catholic church whose parish was founded right after the Union, through the synagogue courtyard of a vanished market town, to the castle walls where the walled-up bride waits — and then you will climb Yuryeva Hill, an ancient pagan sanctuary, from which the whole castle can be seen at a glance.
The route is on foot, about two kilometres, with no backtracking. We start at the Church of St. Alexander Nevsky on Zarechnaya Street — that is where we set off.
The route points in order — what these places are and why they are interesting. Tasks and answers stay inside the quest.
This church was built in 1854, and built to last for centuries — from the material that has always been in abundance on these hills. The church is shaped like a ship — a silhouette typical of Orthodox churches in general: a church-ark sailing through time.
Beside the church stands a memorial marker dedicated to the history of the Catholic parish in Krevo. It appeared on the site of the former wooden church, so that the old beginning would not be lost behind the new building.
From the memorial marker, walk on to the pale Catholic church.
From the church head south, toward the castle — on the way a completely different Krevo will open up to you. More than a hundred years ago this was a classic market town, or shtetl: according to the 1897 census, 809 Jews lived here — more than a third of the entire population.
The restored gate gives the castle back a clear boundary between the outer road and the inner courtyard. Behind this entrance remain the walls and the Prince’s Tower, and in front of it runs an accessible path.
Now walk along the walls to the south, to the opposite corner of the castle, where the second tower, the Small Tower, stands. On the way, remember why you are here: somewhere in these walls, if the legend is to be believed, a bride is still walled in with her little dog.
This stop is optional — a small detour of a hundred and fifty metres at the foot of Yuryeva Hill. The area is open, with no fence and no tickets; you should only come here in daylight.
The final climb is up Yuryeva Hill. The hill is not large, some fifteen to twenty metres, but its history is deeper than the castle’s.
This route is part of Metravel city quests. Below are the other quests in this city and cities with quests nearby.