Hill of Crosses tour from Riga: 1 hour at the site

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Free cancellationTravelers' pick

1/6

Duration5h 40m

GroupUp to 8

Audio guideEN

Mobile ticketAccepted

The crosses keep coming, and so do the stories they carry.

You travel south from Riga in a shared van with printouts and a virtual guide option, spend an hour exploring the Hill of Crosses — a pilgrimage site of hundreds of thousands of crosses — and stop at the Latvia-Lithuania border for photos on the way back. The drive is long, but it's built into the time, and you'll need your passport or EU ID to cross.

5h 40m

Step-by-step itinerary

Tour to Hill of Crosses and Jelgava

Drive 2 hours to Hill of Crosses
Explore Hill of Crosses for 1 hour
Use virtual guide and read printouts
Leave or purchase a cross on site
Optional photo stop at Latvia-Lithuania border
Drive through Jelgava city
See Baroque palace and historic buildings

The Experience

You'll need your passport for this one — that's the first thing the confirmation email says, and it's because you're actually crossing a border. The Hill of Crosses sits just inside Lithuania, about two hours south of Riga, and the drive itself is part of what makes the trip work. The van fills with maybe eight or nine other travelers, all heading the same direction, and somewhere around the halfway point you'll stop at the Latvia-Lithuania border for photos. It's a small moment, but it lands different when you're standing between two countries with nothing but a line on the ground.

The Hill itself is stranger than pictures suggest. Hundreds of thousands of crosses — wooden ones, metal ones, tiny ones, massive ones — planted so close they almost lean on each other. You get an hour to walk around, and the printouts they hand you on the van explain some of the history: this place has been a pilgrimage site for centuries, a way people left their faith behind when they couldn't say it out loud. Pope John Paul II came here in 1993. There's a virtual tour available too, but it only works if your phone has a signal, and honestly the printouts are clearer. If you want to leave a cross yourself, you can buy one on site or bring your own.

On the way back to Riga, you'll drive through Jelgava, the fourth-largest city in Latvia. Most of it was rebuilt after World War II — the Soviet-era apartment blocks are hard to miss — but there are older buildings scattered through, Russian Empire palaces with details that survived. The guide points them out from the van, and you get another set of printouts to read. The whole thing takes 5.5 hours total, and that includes the drive time both ways. You need at least three people booked for the tour to run, so it's genuinely small group, not a coach full of fifty.

What’s included

Your day includes pickup from Riga in an air-conditioned shared van, a photo stop at the Latvia-Lithuania border, one hour at the Hill of Crosses with access to a virtual guide (WiFi dependent) and printed information, a drive through Jelgava with historical details, and parking fees.
You'll receive printouts on the way to help you understand what you're seeing.
Bring your own cross if you want to leave one, or purchase one on site.

Good to know

Easy physical levelPets welcomePublic transport nearby

Operated by Latvian Gem

Is this one for you?Right for travelers with a few hours to spare and a genuine interest in pilgrimage sites and border history. The drive is long — nearly four hours round trip — but that's what gets you to a place most tour buses skip, and the small group size means the van doesn't feel crowded.