Qualla: Sigulda Castle

Sigulda Castle: Introduction

Sat, 25 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit CC BY-SA 3.0. Through any window of Sigulda New Castle, the view is the same. The Gauja valley falls away to the north in cliffs of red sandstone, with the ruins of the medieval Sigulda Castle in the foreground, the towers of Krimulda Castle on the next rise, and Turaida Castle's red brick keep rising on the far ridge across the river. It is one of the most photographed views in Latvia. The neo-Gothic house from which you see it was built in 1881 for a Russian princely family who lived in it for thirty-six years before fleeing the revolution, and since then it has belonged to writers, a Press Society, the Wehrmacht's Army Group North, the Soviet Health Department, and finally the local city council. The view is the constant; the people behind the window keep changing.

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Image: CC BY-SA 3.0

Sigulda Castle: The Kropotkins Build a House

Sat, 25 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Eerokangor, CC BY-SA 3.0 ee. Duchess Olga and Duke Dmitry Kropotkin began the construction in 1878. They were a wealthy branch of the same family that produced the anarchist philosopher Peter Kropotkin, although the Sigulda Kropotkins were on the imperial side of the family ledger. The architect was Janis Me...

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Image: Eerokangor | CC BY-SA 3.0 ee

Sigulda Castle: The Writers Move In

Sat, 25 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Raul Cortez999, CC BY-SA 4.0. After the war, the new Republic of Latvia carried out land reform that broke up the great Baltic German and Russian estates. The wrecked Kropotkin house went to the Latvian Union of Writers and Journalists in 1922. They poured a great deal of money into restoration; in the 1920s ...

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Image: Raul Cortez999 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Sigulda Castle: Occupations and Recoveries

Sat, 25 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit User:Brunswyk, CC BY-SA 3.0. In 1938, a monument to Atis Kronvalds, the nineteenth-century teacher and publicist who helped lead the second wave of the New Latvian movement, was unveiled in front of the castle by the sculptor Teodors Zalkalns. Two years later, Latvia was Soviet. A year after that, Latvia was...

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Image: User:Brunswyk | CC BY-SA 3.0

Sigulda Castle: The Manor Complex Today

Sat, 25 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Own Work., Public domain. The New Castle is only one piece of a manor complex whose layers reach back to the seventeenth century. The Summer Castle next door, a yellow elongated wooden house in the classicist style, was built around 1800 by Marcis Sarums, a master builder from Cesis whom local lore calls ...

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Image: Own Work. | Public domain