Surrounded by an idyllic wooded landscape, the tower of the red-brick Evangelical Lutheran church of Nida rises towards the sky, recalling the long and complicated history of this house of prayer. The people of Nida, like all the inhabitants of the Curonian Spit, were very religious – probably because of the constant danger of not returning from the sea. So the church was always especially important to this region. The earlier house of prayer, built in 1569 in Old Nida about 2 kilometres south of the present church, had been buried by sand together with the whole settlement by 1675, so the Lutheran pastor Gustav Echternach set about building a new church. The members of the congregation could not cover the cost of construction themselves, so the pastor sent 6,000 requests to Evangelical institutions and churches throughout the German Reich, and his requests were heard: in 1888 a neo-Gothic red-brick church was consecrated on a high hill among the pines of the spit, and believers from the surrounding area began to flock to it. Sadly, the times were unkind to the church, and it went through many wartime trials and the care of different owners. However, after independence was restored, the renovated building was returned to the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Lithuania in 1992. Today the church is adorned with stained-glass windows, an altarpiece by E. Mollenhauer, "Christ Reaching Out His Hand to the Apostle Peter, Who Is Afraid of Drowning", and copies of the lamps donated by Empress Augusta Victoria, while an impressive organ calls people to services. Next to the church lies the ethnographic fishermen's cemetery of Nida, with its traditional grave markers (krikštai); the church's builder, G. Echternach, is buried there. Today Nida church is a place not only of prayer but also of culture. Concerts are held here regularly, and the church itself, especially during the annual Thomas Mann Festival, finds itself at the centre of attention as it becomes a concert hall.