Čižiūnai Linear Village

Čižiūnai is a street village of forty-eight homesteads. The village has landscape value. Čižiūnai is a street village in the north-east of Varėna district, near the Vilnius–Varėna road, on the right bank of the Merkis River. It is one of the most beautiful and typical street villages in Lithuania.
In this part of Dzūkija, people had very strange nicknames. Everyone called a resident of Čižiūnai Jonas Franka, although in reality he was Aleksas Verseckas. The Saulėnai families have nicknames: Mėkalikai, Blatkos, Fockės, Jurčikės. The Kazlauskas families are called Buržuliai, Mulai; the Markevičiai are called Andromas and Čižikiės, the Černiauskas are called Kriseliais, the Galvanauskas are called Raibiais, the Sinkevičiai are called Baronai, the Uždaviņi are called Zavadskais, the Žydeliai are called Karalais.
The residents of this village were extremely devout and would walk more than 50 km from Valkininkai to Vilnius Calvary, the Gate of Dawn, to pray.