Botanical Garden
The gardens surrounding the museum cover about 100 hectares. They were designed by the French landscape architect and botanist Édouard André (1840–1911) and his son Rene Eduard Andre, assisted by the Belgian gardener Buyssen de Coulon. Local historians have estimated that they originally contained about 500 varieties of trees and shrubs, some brought from gardens in Berlin. About 250 imported and 370 native plant species are now represented at the park; 24 of these are included in Lithuania's 1992 list of endangered species. Pine and fir trees adapted to the sandy soil predominate.
The park features a rose garden, greenhouse, rotunda, a sculpture of Eglė, the Queen of Serpents, a Holocaust memorial, ponds, and gazebos; during the summer it hosts concerts and festivals. It contains an ancient forested sand dune, known as Birutė's Hill (Lithuanian: Birutės kalnas), topped with a chapel dedicated to Saint George that was built in 1869. According to legend, this dune is the place where Grand Duke of Lithuania Kęstutis met his wife Birutė, a pagan priestess, and where she is supposed to have been interred in 1382; it has been a pilgrimage site ever since.
Read more about this topic: Palanga Amber Museum
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