Our Lady of the Gate of Dawn
Vilnius, Lithuania (1363)
In 1363, Grand Duke Algirdas of Lithuania conquered Kherson (now in Ukraine), and brought back its icon of the Mother of God as a present for his wife, Luliania, who installed it in the new Trinity Monastery in Vilnius. After the Tatar attack in 1503, the people of the Lithuanian capital surrounded the city with a wall. On the eastern gate (Gate of Dawn, in Lithuanian), an icon of the Savior looked out toward the enemy homelands of Russia and Mongolia, and inside, the Virgin from Kherson looked in toward the people of Vilnius.