Kaunas church reveals 300-year-old burials beneath its floors

Archaeologists working in Kaunas, Lithuania, discovered eight graves beneath the floor of the Church of the Most Holy Sacrament. The people buried there likely lived between the 17th and 18th centuries, and appear to have been members of Kaunas’s elite, including those who contributed to the church’s construction.

Simonas Sprindys, an archaeologist, described the remarkably well-preserved coffins and remains, noting one woman was buried in a coffin painted with stars.

Around fifty sets of remains have been found throughout the church, and researchers believe many more lie beneath those already uncovered, as coffins were stacked on top of each other. Artifacts found with the bodies included crosses, coins, medals, and ornate coffin handles. One man was found wearing a well-preserved woolen zipun, a garment popular with nobility in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and even traces of his hair and mustache remained.

The church, which once served as a grain warehouse, an Orthodox church, and a cinema during the Soviet era, underwent renovations funded by the European Union and the Kaunas archdiocese. The discovery of the burials presents a challenge, as the project now requires additional funding, approximately 200,000 euros, to complete the archaeological work and create a crypt in the church basement to reinter the remains after study at Vilnius University.