13th Century Castle

Here is the castle at Cesis, Latvia. The Lats have yet to discover American marketing schemes...no magnets, no postcards, no snack shop, no snow globes with a castle inside. It costs just 2 lats to explore the whole thing with a candle as your flashlight.

Construction of the castle is thought to have begun around 1209, in the time of Master of the Order of Swordbrothers Wenno von Rorbach (1202 - 1209). It was built at a strategic location as a military base for the conquest of northern Latvia and Estonia and for defending these territories. After the annihilation of the Order of Swordbrothers at the Battle of Saule in 1236, a branch of the Teutonic Order was established in the Baltic: the Livonian Order. The first master of the newly established order, Hermann Balke, chose Cesis as his residence. Thereafter, Cesis Castle became the meeting place of the chapter, or ruling council, of the Livonian Order, and the residence of the masters (1239 - 1561, with interruptions). Gradually, a town grew up around the castle. Already in 1221, a chronicle mentions a village next to the castle, although Cesis is mentioned in documents as a town only in 1323.