Dating back to the middle of the 14th century and itself built on the site of what many believe to be a former pagan place of worship, the charming albeit somewhat diminutive Orthodox Church of St. Paraskeva can not only claim to have been the first church in Vilnius to be made of stone but is also the alleged location of the baptism in 1705 of none other than Hannibal, the African prince and great grandfather of Alexander Pushkin who was brought to Russia by Peter the Great from the part of Africa that’s now Eritrea. Originally in the hands of the Uniate Church, the building, which had been rebuilt on several occasions due to fire, fell into disrepair around the time of the Third Partition of 1795, laying abandoned for seven decades before being almost completely rebuilt in 1864 only to suffer major fire damage during WWII. Reconstructed in 1949, the building closed in 1961, opening a year later as a museum of painting before being returned to the Orthodox Church on May 31, 1991. Unusually for a Russian Orthodox Church in Lithuania, services are conducted in Lithuanian once a week on a Sunday.