Curonian Spit, sand spit in Lithuania and Russia

The Curonian Spit is a 98-kilometre sabre-shaped sand spit separating the Baltic Sea from the Curonian Lagoon, running from Zelenogradsk in Russia to Smiltynė near Klaipėda in Lithuania. Its body is sand under a vegetation layer only a few centimetres thick, with a continuous belt of white dunes 0.3–1 km wide and up to 67.2 m high. Forests cover 72% of the spit.

Deforestation during medieval times allowed dunes to migrate and bury several settlements beneath sand. Starting in the early 19th century, Prussian authorities launched a reforestation program that gradually stabilized the terrain.

The spit's name comes from the Curonians, Baltic fishermen who settled here from the 15th century and spoke a Latvian-related dialect called Nehrungskurisch, still heard until 1945. Their descendants, the Kursenieki, lived in villages such as Nida and Rybachy, and the spit's German name Kurische Nehrung refers to them.

The spit is crossed almost end to end by an asphalt road: the R 515 on the Russian side and the 167 in Lithuania. On the Lithuanian stretch, kilometre stones show distances from the Russian border on the left and from the Smiltynė ferry landing on the right. The road begins in the south at the spit sign near Zelenogradsk and ends at the old ferry landing opposite Klaipėda.

The spit is called the "bird bridge": 10 to 20 million birds of 150 species cross it each spring and autumn, and up to a million pass in a single day. The Rybachy ornithological station, founded by Johannes Thienemann in 1901, is the oldest in Europe.