St John's Hill, or Švento Jono kalnas, is the older ground beneath the pilgrimage village. The mound is associated with Gardai, the early settlement mentioned in the thirteenth century, and it stands above the Varduva stream on the southern side of town.
The hill is not dramatic in the way a castle ruin might be, but it gives Žemaičių Kalvarija useful depth. The calvary chapels nearby sit on a landscape that was meaningful long before the seventeenth-century pilgrimage route was laid over it.