The Curonian Spit
A first-time visitor to the Curonian Spit is offered an inspiring view: majestic sand dunes, rising up
to 67 metres and, literally, emerging from the blue depths of the sea. The Curonian Spit, a 98-
kilometre long peninsula washed by the Baltic Sea on the West and separated from the mainland by the Curonian lagoon to the East, is a superb example of the fine balance between human activity and nature, a masterpiece of functional landscape design on a massive scale. To contemporary human beings, confident in their supremacy over nature, the story of the Curonian Spit teaches a sober lesson. The Spit (with a total area of 180 square kilometres), only 370 metres wide at Šarkuva (now Lesnoe) and never exceeding 3.8 kilometres in its greatest width, at the Horn of Bulvikis, was sculpted by winds and currents about 5,000 years ago. Archaeological findings indicate that the peninsula was inhabited at the end of the Neolithic period. Still more numerous finds date from the third and second millennia BC. The forebears of the Baltic tribes are believed to have settled between the parabolic dunes where they could fish and find shelter from the winds.
Today a sun-lit view of wooden farmsteads nestling at the foot of the dunes strikes the visitor as the very image of Arcadia - and yet, it is a very fragile one. Roughly two centuries ago ill-considered human activity destroyed the natural vegetation leaving entire fishermen's villages exposed to windblown sand. The Spit was saved only by a project extending over nearly one century that reintroduced protective layers of grass, shrubs and trees. This work continues to the present day, and will have to go on as long as people want this peninsula for themselves.
The Republic of Lithuania shares the Curonian Spit (the 52-kilometre long northern half) and the responsibility to protect it, with the Kaliningrad enclave of the Russian Federation.
To recognize the unique interaction between people and the environment, as well as the combination of the natural and the cultural heritage, the Curonian Spit, a transboundary site, was inscribed as a cultural landscape on the World Heritage List in 2000. By presenting the nomination, the two governments of Lithuania and of the Russian Federation re-stated their commitment, on the international level, to protect the Spit from destruction by the forces of nature and occasionally by human activity.