Immediately east of the Sts. Apostles Peter & Paul Cathedral at the bottom of the hill, the poignant Old City Cemetery was opened in 1831 after the cholera epidemic of the same year. Actually comprised of three cemeteries for the burial of members of the city’s Catholic, Russian Orthodox and non-believer communities, the cemetery’s now closed with the exception of the occasional important burial. Among the many buried here are various family members of Sofia Kymantaitė-Čiurlionienė (1886-1958), the wife of the Lithuanian painter and composer Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis and none other than the founder of the city’s Rūta chocolate factory, Antanas Gricevičius (1877-1949).
