Turaida Castle, Latvia

This is the most visited of the castles between Riga and the Estonian border--this view is taken from the Sigulda Medeival Castle with my simple iPhone camera, so you can see just how close they really are to each other. Turaida Castle was the third castle. I have fond memories of it not for the crowds inside the grounds, but for the artisanal shawl I bought for my mother from a vendor outside. It is beautiful and unique, and left me with warm feelings about this place.

The oldest part of the story of Turaida is related to the history of another indigenous nation of Latvia – the Livs. Until the early 13th century, Turaida had been a significant centre of the Gauja Livs. The Livonians are a Balto-Finnic people indigenous to northern and northwestern Latvia. Livonians historically spoke Livonian, a Uralic language closely related to Estonian and related to Finnish. There are vanishingly few who still speak this today. Construction of the Turaida stone castle was started in 1214. Until the end of the 16th century, it served as a residence of Archbishops of Riga who that ruled lands. Over the centuries the castle had been rebuilt and improved until a fire damaged it in 1776, after which it was no longer inhabited and gradually turned into ruins.