Ruins of the Deltuva Evangelical Reformed Church

The exact date when the Deltuva Evangelical Reformed church was first built is unknown. In 1611 the Deltuva church was already marked in the lists of the Lithuanian Evangelical Reformed (Calvinist) Church, which add that no information about its founders or first benefactors has survived. From the time of the First World War no services were held in the Deltuva church; pilgrims with clergy came only occasionally. In 1919 Bolshevik soldiers desecrated the burials in the church crypts in search of gold. A photograph of the church was published in 1937. During the Second World War German soldiers lived in the church for some time, and at the end of the war the retreating Germans blew up the church tower. As a result other parts of the building were also badly damaged; the building was left untended and deteriorated rapidly. In the post-war years the remains of partisans and resistance fighters who had been killed were buried by the church. Later the ruins of the church were turned into a rubbish dump. When the national revival began, volunteer clean-ups cleared the interior of the church of rubbish, trees and bushes.