Imagine a tiny speck of dry land rising out of a marshy wetland. That is Riečių piliakalnis. It sits on a dry peninsula in the Žuvinto marshes, a triangular clearing measuring 25 metres long by 20 metres wide at its southern end. It served as a defensive fortification, perched on a hill up to 10 metres high.
People were here a thousand years ago. It is a first-millennium site, though the earth has seen better days. The slopes are quite eroded now, partly due to the digging of a triangulation tower and some old gravel extraction from the southern side. There are stones up to 1.2 metres wide scattered across the surface today.
You can find a cross standing in the clearing, put there in 2001 to mark the village of Liepakojai. Between the hillfort and the heights where the Riečių Švč. Trejybės bažnyčia now stands, there used to be a threshing floor.
Sources: Wikipedia, OpenStreetMap, Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons
Written by Nicolo Ciampini
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