Kražiai

Kražiai stands on the Kražantė River among the old hillforts and burial mounds of Samogitia. Its name appears in a document of King Mindaugas in 1257, when part of Samogitia was assigned to the Teutonic Order. A centre of the district after the defeat of the Order at Grunwald, it also played a part in the conversion of Samogitia to Christianity in the fifteenth century.

The town gave shelter to unlikely visitors in the sixteenth century. Catherine Brandon, Duchess of Suffolk, and her husband Richard Bertie fled religious persecution in England and lived at Kražiai as administrators for King Sigismund Augustus. In the following century monasteries and a Jesuit college made the town a prominent Catholic centre. Kražiai was also home to a Jewish community whose rabbis and scholars contributed to its religious life.