"Even if 'Vytautas' is written on the skull, we won't believe it." Vilnius begins drilling into the cathedral wall in search of the Grand Duke's tomb
In Vilnius, preparations have begun to inspect a walled-up corridor beneath St. Casimir's Chapel, where the bones of the Grand Duke of Lithuania might have been hidden during the interwar period. The scientists themselves are skeptical of the "Polish conspiracy" theory, but in case of a discovery, they are already preparing a reference genetic profile of the Gediminids using the remains of the Slutsk princes Olelkavich.
The Lithuanian Institute of History officially announced the start of preparatory work on November 3, 2026. The site near the outer wall of St. Casimir's Chapel is already being enclosed with a protective fence, where certified equipment will soon be brought.
As we wrote in detail earlier in a large historical article and its continuation, the idea of resuming the search for Vytautas the Great's tomb, lost in the 17th century, intensified after a hiding place with royal burial insignias, concealed at the beginning of World War II, was found in the cathedral's crypts in December 2024. Then, in the spring of 2026, restorer Saulius Poderys came forward with a sensational hypothesis that Vytautas's remains had actually been found by the Poles after the 1931 flood, along with the remains of Alexander Jagiellon, Elizabeth of Habsburg, and Barbara Radziwiłł, but for political reasons, they were allegedly hidden from the Lithuanians. Based on archival photographs from Gdańsk, Poderys identified the specific location where the "fourth skeleton" might have been hidden — a walled-up corridor near the western wall of the royal mausoleum.
Why drilling will be done from the outside, not from the crypts
Details of how this version will be checked and what scientists have already managed to ascertain were presented at a special public seminar of the Lithuanian Institute of History. The project manager on site, archaeologist Saulius Sarcevičius, and architect Robertas Zilinskas explained that the mysterious void, 3 meters long, 1 meter wide, and 2.5 meters high, is a fragment of an ancient drainage collector.
It was built in the first half of the 17th century during the construction of St. Casimir's Chapel to divert groundwater along the perimeter of the church towards the Vilnia River. When Polish specialists built the royal mausoleum under the chapel in 1932–1937, they encountered severe dampness and walled up this passage from both sides.
Initially, it seemed easiest to drill through the wall directly from inside the royal mausoleum. However, an attempt to inspect the masonry with ground-penetrating radar showed that the instruments simply "blinded" due to dense metal reinforcement.
It turned out that in the 1930s, Polish engineers, to protect the mausoleum from underground waters, transformed it into a kind of "tin can" or thermos. On top of the concrete, they laid 17 layers of waterproofing, including lead sheets.
Thanks to this, the mausoleum floor, although it is the lowest point in all the cathedral's underground areas, remains the driest. Breaking through this insulating "thermos" from within is strictly forbidden: it would disrupt the capsule's hermetic seal, and water would enter the mausoleum. Moreover, the moisture pushed out by the insulation already rises capillarily up the walls, which causes the sandstone in St. Casimir's Chapel to constantly crumble.
Therefore, scientists developed a different route that will pass outside the building. Specialists will remove the stone paving slabs near the cathedral wall, excavate the soil, and reach the cast-iron manhole of an old well, located precisely at the edge of the interwar concrete grillage that reinforced the foundation.
From there, moving along the top of the concrete reinforcement, they will drill a hole up to 10 centimeters in diameter at an angle through the interwar brick infill, without affecting the authentic 17th-century masonry and vaults.
The entire process is divided into 19 technological stages. Immediately after the drill penetrates the wall, microbiologists, not archaeologists, will be the first to approach the opening to take air and environmental samples from the enclosed space. Then, a 360-degree camera with powerful lighting and a miniature lidar will be launched inside. This will allow not only a peek behind the wall but also the creation of a three-dimensional scan of the entire room. After the inspection is completed, the hole will be conserved with an injectable lime mortar, and the paving will be restored.
This local research is funded by the Chancellery of the Government of Lithuania, with a budget of 33,673 euros. All operations must be completed by November 30, 2026.
Electrical panel under Vytautas's epitaph and 20 mysterious voids
As Saulius Sarcevičius recounted, preparations for drilling became part of a broader project to study the oldest walls of the cathedral, which started in February–March 2026. Scientists used a dataset of 3D laser scanning of the entire building, from the basements to the attic, performed in 2025 by order of the Martynas Mažvydas National Library.
By combining the three-dimensional model with ground-penetrating radar readings, researchers developed a unique method for Lithuania to search for walled-up voids by analyzing microscopic anomalies in wall curvature — with an accuracy of up to one centimeter on plastered surfaces.
The very first test of the new technology led to a curious discovery. When the instruments were aimed at the eastern wall of the cathedral, directly beneath the famous commemorative plaque with Vytautas's epitaph, the computer showed a clear curvature of the masonry, and the ground-penetrating radar recorded a rectangular void at a depth of 12 to 27 centimeters.
"If I were hiding Vytautas, I would hide him exactly there - who would look right under the plaque that says he is buried here!" Sarcevičius joked at the seminar.
However, the intrigue did not last long: when scientists retrieved pre-war photographs, it turned out that in the 1930s, an ordinary electrical panel had been walled into this niche, which was later plastered over.
In the same way, researchers tested their method in the Goštautas Chapel, pretending not to know exactly where the burial of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania Chancellor Albertas Goštautas was located near his bronze tombstone. The instruments unerringly indicated the reburial site under the slab, and at the same time discovered another vertical anomaly measuring 80 by 30 centimeters to the right of the bas-relief — as archival photographs revealed, in 1986, archaeologists tried to dig under the slab at this spot to look underneath it from the side.
However, other findings turned out to be much more mysterious. In the western wall of the Kęsgaila Chapel (now the Chapel of Divine Mercy), the instruments immediately detected two unknown voids: one of irregular shape, measuring 80 by 50 by 35 centimeters, in the upper part of the wall, and another, perfectly round, 40 centimeters in diameter, at the bottom. Another anomaly was found in the fourth northern column of the church and in the wall opposite it.
By superimposing modern 3D scans and ground-penetrating radar data of the floor onto detailed Polish drawings from 1931–1937 and maps of post-war excavations, institute employees have counted more than 20 unexplored sites in the cathedral's underground areas and walls. Among them are six subterranean rooms filled with earth that have never been touched by archaeologists, as well as five isolated storage rooms under the organ lofts, which are inaccessible after the interwar renovation.
"Political decision" and disputes over conspiracy theories
That is why the decision to start drilling by checking Saulius Poderys's version caused a heated debate among scientists during the seminar. Art historian Birutė Rūta Vitkauskienė of the National Museum of Lithuania publicly criticized the project authors for lacking a specialized historian of the church's architecture in their group, and for a serious institute to be led by dubious sensations.
"Saulius, we are friends, but excuse me: to come out at a presentation and say that Poderys found it here, Poderys said so, and now we will drill there — that is at least unserious or hasty. Or is this an idea that is forming somewhere, and you are following this idea?" the researcher indignantly asked.
Aurimas Švedas, Director of the Lithuanian Institute of History, and Jolanta Karpavičienė, Advisor to the President of Lithuania, were forced to directly admit: the decision to prioritize checking this particular location was dictated from above.
According to Karpavičienė, the interdepartmental working group at the Chancellery of the Government made a "political decision that this particular hypothesis needed to be verified," because society was greatly agitated by public statements about "Vytautas being found."
This was confirmed by Darius Jakavičius, Chairman of the parliamentary Commission for Historical Memory, who was present in the hall and recalled the approaching year 2030 – the 600th anniversary of the Grand Duke's death.
Saulius Poderys himself, the author of the hypothesis, who was sitting in the hall, took the microphone and tried to defend his version. He again referred to Professor Juliusz Kłos's projects, where four sarcophagi were depicted in the mausoleum, and to the Gdańsk photograph, where four skeletons were laid out chronologically on two tables — with the unknown one placed first, before King Alexander Jagiellon.
"No bishop or ruler of a lower rank could have lain before Alexander, except Vytautas," the restorer insisted, adding that there is no document in the archives indicating that the Poles continued to search for Vytautas after the royal crypt was opened in 1931.
However, professional historians and archaeologists began to dismantle these arguments point by point. Art historian and former diplomat Irena Vaišvilaitė recalled that in 1931, along with the three royal burials, a funeral urn containing the heart and entrails of King Władysław IV Vasa was also found. According to European tradition of that time, the burial of a monarch's heart was considered a full-fledged royal burial — which is why four objects might have appeared in the first sketches of the mausoleum, until in 1932 the commission decided to abandon a separate sarcophagus for Władysław IV and leave only the urn for him, which stands there today.
An even more serious logical flaw in Poderys's version was noted by the research leader Saulius Sarcevičius himself, who studied more than 119 interwar photographs from Jan Borowski's collection at the National Museum in Gdańsk. Firstly, one of the in situ photographs (at the discovery site) recorded a skeleton labeled "skeleton of the king," which clearly lies in a completely different place, not in the royal crypt with Alexander and Barbara.
Secondly, on the same table where four sets of bones are laid out, for some reason, there are only three skulls.
"Why such strange logic: here we photograph all four together, and then remove one skull? Just stick to simple logic: either the Poles were hiding him all along, or they weren't hiding him at all!" Sarcevičius remarked.
Sarcevičius added that in academic circles, conspiracy theories about "Poles hiding Vytautas" are viewed very skeptically, drawing an unexpected parallel with Belarusians:
"Scientists look at this similar to how Belarusian history wants to appropriate the Grand Duchy of Lithuania — as if saying, 'these are not our problems, this is wrong.' But since counterarguments have not yet been publicly voiced, this discussion became a gauntlet thrown to scientists."
Gintautas Striška, an archaeologist from the Palace of the Grand Dukes, expressed himself even more ironically. He recalled that earlier, Poderys suggested searching for Vytautas either in crypt No. 4, which had already been excavated in Soviet times and in 2016, or accused others of stealing remains, and now points to the drainage collector.
"Since all these works are well funded by the state, if it turns out there's nothing there, let's just send this person a bill — so that such unscientific theories don't arise again," Striška proposed to laughter and applause from the audience.
Genetic trail of the Olelkavich in Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra
To his colleagues' question about what exactly the researchers expect to see through the 10-centimeter hole in the wall, Saulius Sarcevičius answered cautiously: if there is a reburial from the 1930s, it could not have simply been thrown into dirt, but must lie in some box or coffin. If the camera shows human remains there, a separate decision will have to be made on how to retrieve them, as this is impossible through a narrow borehole.
The archaeologist emphasized that even the discovery of bones or insignias would not prove anything on its own:
"Even if a skull lies there with 'Vytautas' written on it, we still won't believe it, because the final word must be given by geneticists."
As reported in the programmatic article by Aurimas Švedas, Director of the Lithuanian Institute of History, preparations for such genetic comparisons are already underway at an international level. Specialists from the Center for Bioarcheology and Human Paleogenetics at Vilnius University, led by Professor Rimantas Jankauskas, have already begun researching the remains of the Olelkavich, buried in the Kyiv-Pechersk Lavra in Ukraine.
Since the Slutsk and Kyiv princes Olelkavich were direct descendants of Grand Duke Algirdas — the biological brother of Vytautas's father Kęstutis — they shared the same male Y-chromosome of the Gediminid lineage. The obtained genetic profile of the Slutsk princes will allow for accurate verification of any future findings in the crypts of Vilnius Cathedral, where hundreds of unidentified burials from various eras are preserved.
Even if the camera in the walled-up collector under St. Casimir's Chapel shows only emptiness by the end of November 2026, Lithuanian scientists view this as the start of a large state program for the full investigation of the cathedral, planned until 2030. In the same November 2026, the Lithuanian Institute of History and Vilnius University plan to launch another joint project — the deciphering and publication of the album of the Archbrotherhood of the Most Sweet Name of Mary, discovered in the cathedral wall in 1956, where monarchs, magnates, and hierarchs of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and Poland personally inscribed from 1671 to 1938, leaving about 18,000 autographs.
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