Hill of Crosses, Rundale Palace and Bauska Castle Tour from Riga

Hill of Crosses, a pilgrimage site in Lithuania

Near the town of Šiauliai in northern Lithuania, a small grassy hill is covered by a forest of crosses, from towering wooden crucifixes carved in the folk tradition to tiny rosaries hanging in clusters. The custom began after the nineteenth-century uprisings against Russian rule, when families with no graves to visit planted crosses here in memory of the missing. In the Soviet era the hill was flattened again and again, and each time crosses quietly returned.

Your guide explains this history on site, then gives you time to walk the narrow paths between the crosses, read the messages and, if you wish, place a small cross of your own, sold near the entrance. A Franciscan hermitage stands just behind the hill. Many travellers ask how to get to the Hill of Crosses from Riga in one day: on this tour it is simply a comfortable drive of around two hours, with the border crossed without formalities inside the Schengen Area.

Rundāle Palace, the Versailles of Latvia

Rundāle Palace, about 80 kilometres south of Riga, is the finest baroque and rococo palace in the Baltic states. It was built as the summer residence of the Duke of Courland, designed by the leading court architect of the Russian Empire, who later created the Winter Palace in St Petersburg. Work began in 1736, stopped when the duke fell from power, and was completed in the 1760s with lavish rococo interiors.

After the duchy was absorbed into the Russian Empire in 1795, the palace passed to noble families, and in the twentieth century it served as a school and even a grain store. A painstaking restoration began in 1972 and lasted more than four decades. Is Rundāle Palace worth visiting? Without doubt: it is often called the Versailles of Latvia, and this Rundāle Palace tour from Riga includes a fully guided visit inside rather than an audio guide.

Inside Rundāle: the Gold Hall, White Hall and ducal apartments

The state rooms begin with the Gold Hall, the former throne room, glittering with gilded stucco and a painted ceiling, connected by the long Grand Gallery to the White Hall, a ballroom decorated entirely in white stucco with delicate reliefs of birds, flowers and scenes of country life. These two halls are the showpieces of the palace and the best place for photographs.

Your guide then leads you through the Duke's apartments, a suite of smaller rooms with silk wall coverings, tiled stoves, porcelain and period furniture, including the duke's bedroom and audience rooms. Along the way you learn how court life worked in eighteenth-century Courland and how the restorers recreated lost decoration from old drawings and fragments. Allow about an hour for the guided interior visit, which is included with all fees in the tour.

The gardens of Rundāle Palace

Behind the palace stretches a formal French garden laid out on the original eighteenth-century plan, with a central parterre, clipped hedges, fountains, a green theatre and avenues of lime trees leading to the woods. The garden was reconstructed during the restoration and is one of the best examples of baroque garden design in Northern Europe.

The rose garden is a highlight from June to September, with historic and modern roses arranged in long beds that fill the air with scent. The best time to visit Rundāle is from late May to September, when the gardens are in full bloom and the fountains are working, though the palace interiors are worth seeing in every season. Your guide leaves time to stroll the main axis of the garden before the group continues to Bauska.

Bauska Castle

Bauska Castle stands on a narrow headland where the Mūsa and Mēmele rivers meet to form the Lielupe, about 20 minutes from Rundāle. It was built by the Livonian Order in the fifteenth century as a fortress guarding the trade road to Lithuania. In the late sixteenth century the dukes of Courland added a residential palace in Mannerist style, with walls decorated in black-and-white sgraffito patterns.

The castle was blown up in 1706 during the Great Northern War and stood as a romantic ruin for centuries. Today the older fortress remains a ruin, while the restored palace houses a museum with exhibitions on the dukes and life in the castle, and a tower with views over the rivers and the town of Bauska. After this guided stop the group drives back to Riga, about an hour and a quarter away, arriving in the Old Town in the early evening.