Qualla: Jelgava Palace

Jelgava Palace: Introduction

Sat, 25 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Yakikaki, CC BY-SA 3.0. When Bartolomeo Rastrelli began Jelgava Palace in 1738, he was the favorite architect of the Russian Empress Anna Ioannovna's lover. Ernst Johann von Biron - born a minor German nobleman, raised by Anna's favor to Duke of Courland - wanted a residence that would announce his status to all of Europe. Rastrelli, the Italian who would later design the Winter Palace and Tsarskoye Selo, gave him the largest Baroque palace in the Baltic states. Then Anna died in 1740. Biron was arrested within weeks and exiled to Siberia. Construction stopped abruptly with the roof not yet finished. Rastrelli took most of the building materials and decorative elements to Saint Petersburg and used them in other palaces. Jelgava sat half-built for twenty-two years.

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Image: Yakikaki | CC BY-SA 3.0

Jelgava Palace: Ducal Ambition

Sat, 25 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Igors Jefimovs, CC BY 3.0. Courland was a small duchy in what is now western Latvia, technically a vassal of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth but functionally independent. The Dukes of Courland came from the Kettler dynasty until 1737, when Biron - through Anna's patronage - replaced them. The site Biron...

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Image: Igors Jefimovs | CC BY 3.0

Jelgava Palace: A Refuge for the French

Sat, 25 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Valdis Veinbergs, CC BY-SA 4.0. Russia annexed Courland in 1795 during the Third Partition of Poland. The duchy ceased to exist. The palace passed to the Russian crown. Three years later it became the most unlikely of refuges. Louis XVIII of France, brother of the executed Louis XVI and pretender to the French ...

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Image: Valdis Veinbergs | CC BY-SA 4.0

Jelgava Palace: Burned and Restored

Sat, 25 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Pietro Rotari, Public domain. The palace served as the residence of the governor-general of Courland through the nineteenth century. It survived Napoleon's brief Polish invasion in 1812. It was damaged by fire several times - 1788, 1815 - but always patched up. Real destruction came in 1919, in the chaos of t...

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Image: Pietro Rotari | Public domain

Jelgava Palace: The Ducal Crypt

Sat, 25 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Zairon, CC BY-SA 4.0. In the southeast basement of the palace lies a vault that survived everything. The crypt of the Dukes of Courland holds twenty-one sarcophagi and nine wooden coffins - the burials of every duke from the Houses of Kettler and Biron between 1569 and 1791. The remains were moved her...

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Image: Zairon | CC BY-SA 4.0

Jelgava Palace: The University in the Palace

Sat, 25 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ken Eckert, CC BY-SA 4.0. Today Jelgava Palace houses the Latvia University of Life Sciences and Technologies. Students walk hallways that once held Louis XVIII's exiled court. Lectures happen in rooms that were once ballrooms - the former silver hall, the former golden hall, the former banquet hall now s...

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Image: Ken Eckert | CC BY-SA 4.0