Rating
4/5 (based on Google user reviews)
Holy Transfiguration Church is an Orthodox church in Kėdainiai. The first, wooden Orthodox church was constructed in 1643. From 1652 it belonged to an Orthodox monastery of the Holy Transfiguration, which was destroyed by fire in 1771. After this event the monastery was never rebuilt and the monks moved to the Holy Spirit Monastery in Vilnius. In 1798 it was officially closed. Despite the advice of the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church, the remaining church was not made a parish church because of the tiny number of Orthodox Christians living permanently in Kėdainiai. The services were held there only occasionally, wherever a Russian military unit arrived to the town.
In 1841 this situation changed together with the arrival of more Russians to the town. In 1895 the church also turned out to be too tiny and it was replaced by the one which was preserved up to today. During World War I, the church was abandoned. Only in 1918 new parish clergy arrived to Kėdainiai. It was registered as an active parish by the Soviet government in 1947, with 230 parishioners at this moment.
References:The Goseck circle is a Neolithic circle structure. It may be the oldest and best known of the Circular Enclosures associated with the Central European Neolithic. It also may be one of the oldest Solar observatories in the world. It consists of a set of concentric ditches 75 metres across and two palisade rings containing gates in places aligned with sunrise and sunset on the solstice days.
Its construction is dated to c. 4900 BC, and it seems to have remained in use until 4600 BC. This corresponds to the transitional phase between the Neolithic Linear Pottery and Stroke-ornamented ware cultures. It is one of a larger group of so-called Circular Enclosures in the Elbe and Danube region, most of which show similar alignments.
Excavators also found the remains of what may have been ritual fires, animal and human bones, and a headless skeleton near the southeastern gate, that could be interpreted as traces of human sacrifice or specific burial ritual. There is no sign of fire or of other destruction, so why the site was abandoned is unknown. Later villagers built a defensive moat following the ditches of the old enclosure.
The Goseck ring is one of the best preserved and extensively investigated of the many similar structures built at around the same time. Traces of the original configuration reveal that the Goseck ring consisted of four concentric circles, a mound, a ditch, and two wooden palisades. The palisades had three sets of gates facing southeast, southwest, and north. At the winter solstice, observers at the center would have seen the sun rise and set through the southeast and southwest gates.
Archaeologists generally agree that Goseck circle was used for observation of the course of the Sun in the course of the solar year. Together with calendar calculations, it allowed coordinating an easily judged lunar calendar with the more demanding measurements of a solar calendar.
