Construction of the church began around 1400, and the tower was added at the end of the fifteenth century or the start of the sixteenth. The article attributes it to Grand Duke Vytautas the Great, as thanks to the Virgin Mary for saving his life after a defeat. The earliest surviving record dates from 1439. No architect is named for the original build.
The style is Brick Gothic. The article calls the Latin cross plan unique in Lithuanian Gothic. The bell tower may have guided ships on the Neman River, and the spire was restored in 1982 from a seventeenth-century engraving.
Russian forces nearly destroyed it in 1655, and the French burned the interior in 1812. It was returned to the Catholic Church in 1919 and consecrated in 1920. It became a National Cultural Monument in 2002.
Comments