Aizkraukle Castle: A Livonian Order Fortress in Latvia
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.4
- Popularity
- Low
- Country
- Latvia
- Primary era
- Medieval
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Medieval
- Civilizations
- Crusader, Livonian Brothers of the Sword, Livonian Order
- Site type
- Military
- Remains
- Castle
On this page14 sections
History
Aizkraukle Castle is a medieval fortress of the Livonian Order in Latvia, located in Aizkraukle Parish beside the Daugava. Generally dated to the thirteenth century, it served as the principal castle of the Aizkraukle commandery from the thirteenth to the seventeenth century. The site stood on the right bank of the river near an important crossing and became both an administrative center and the residence of the local commander.
Before and during the crusades
The castle took its name from a nearby Livonian hillfort, known in medieval forms as Ascrad or Asscrade. During the Livonian Crusade, a campaign through which German Christian forces conquered and converted territories in the eastern Baltic, crusaders burned the earlier stronghold in the summer of 1205. Its inhabitants were compelled to accept Catholicism, and hostages were taken.
The Brothers of the Sword, a military order active in Livonia before its incorporation into the Livonian Order, built a stone castle near the old hillfort during the leadership of Master Venno. The date of construction remains uncertain. It is generally placed in the thirteenth century, although some interpretations of the architecture associate it with the fourteenth century.
In 1211, an agreement between Bishop Albert, who led the early German Christian mission and conquest in Livonia, and the crusaders assigned the Brothers of the Sword the entire Aizkraukle district. The agreement also granted them one-third of the districts of Salaspils and Dole Island, together with their inhabitants, fields, fisheries, courts, and labor obligations.
Order rule and military conflict
For much of the medieval period, Aizkraukle formed a commandery, an administrative territory governed by a commander, within the Livonian Order. It was the center and commander’s residence of the commandery from 1252 until 1478. From 1478 until the Livonian Order’s state was dissolved in 1562, the castle came under the authority of the land marshal, one of the Order’s senior territorial officials.
The castle was drawn into the conflicts that shaped medieval Livonia. Around 1226, forces led by the Semigallian ruler Viestard temporarily captured it. Around 1229, Viestard’s forces fought troops led by the castle commander Markvart, although the location of that battle remains uncertain. On 5 March 1279, Lithuanians and Semigallians defeated the Order’s forces in the Aizkraukle region, killing the Order’s land master, Ernst von Ratzeburg.
Aizkraukle’s commanders also took part in internal struggles within Livonia. In the fifteenth century, the Order’s grand master assigned the Aizkraukle commander the task of poisoning the Archbishop of Riga, the head of a major ecclesiastical principality in medieval Livonia.
Destruction and changing ownership
The Livonian War, a sixteenth-century conflict involving the Livonian Order, Russia, Poland-Lithuania, Sweden, and Denmark, brought further upheaval. Polish troops took the castle in 1559. Russian forces captured and destroyed it in 1577, even though it had already surrendered to Duke Magnus, a regional ruler allied with Tsar Ivan IV of Russia. Ivan IV ordered the captured former Livonian land marshal Jasper von Münster to be blinded and thrown from the castle to die.
The 1582 Treaty of Jam Zapolski, which ended the Russo-Polish phase of the war, referred to Aizkraukle as the citadel of the Aizkraukle district. After the treaty, the district became a starosty, an administrative estate, within the Cesis voivodeship of the Duchy of Livonia under the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. An inspection in 1599 found the castle severely devastated by Russian and Polish troops and standing empty.
After the Polish-Swedish War, King Gustav II Adolf of Sweden granted the estate to Lieutenant Colonel Simon Schultz in 1630. Schultz built a manor house about one kilometre from the former Order castle on the Daugava bank. His descendants, the Schoultz von Ascheraden family, held the estate for approximately 250 years.
Ruin and conservation
By this period the castle had lost its military importance and was deteriorating. A letter dated 8 October 1633 still described it as defensible, but by 1680 it was already a ruin. Stones from the castle were reused in nearby peasant houses and in a church built beside the ruins in 1694.
The southern tower ruins, which stood approximately six metres high, were blown up in 1946 and their material was used to build a highway. Conservation of the surviving masonry began in 2023. Aizkraukle Castle is a nationally significant protected cultural monument, designated in 1998 under protection number 108.
Remains
Site setting and defensive layout
Aizkraukle Castle occupied a triangular peninsula between the Daugava and the Karikste. The Karikste ravine and the high bank of the Daugava helped enclose the site, which stood beside a river crossing. Two ditches separated the peninsula from the surrounding land. The inner ditch, about 10 metres wide, divided the main castle from its first outer bailey, while a second ditch approximately 100 metres farther away separated the first and second outer baileys.
Main castle
The main castle followed a quadrangular plan, with four service wings arranged around a courtyard measuring approximately 25 by 30 metres. The castle itself measured about 40 by 50 metres, while the total length of its outer walls reached approximately 60 metres. Dolomite quarried from the nearby Daugava bank formed the principal building material, supplemented by fieldstones and red brick. Brick was used inside the buildings, the walls were plastered, and pointed arches formed the upper parts of wall openings.
Outer baileys
The first outer bailey measured approximately 130 by 100 metres, and the second extended about 50 by 125 metres. Medieval craftspeople and merchants lived in the outer-bailey area. A dam and a mill were built on the Karikste. Foundations of the second outer bailey, approximately one metre thick, remain identifiable in the terrain.
Outer defensive enclosure
Northeast of the main castle are foundations of a parcham, an outer defensive enclosure formed by a second ring of walls. This feature was characteristic of Order castles and formed part of Aizkraukle’s wider defensive system.
Towers and surviving masonry
Southern tower
A square tower occupied the southern part of the castle. It measured approximately 7 by 7 metres and had walls up to 1.8 metres thick. Its arrangement was unusual among Livonian castles. Foundations of the tower remain discernible, while the approximately six-metre-high ruins were destroyed in 1946.
Additional firearm towers
Two further towers intended for firearms were added in the fifteenth century. Their construction reflected the castle’s adaptation to changing military technology during the later period of Livonian Order rule.
Wing walls and shore remains
At the northern corner, a surviving masonry section about 15 metres long once divided the northeast and northwest wings. The wall rises to approximately 10 metres, and another surviving masonry fragment reaches about 15 metres in height. At the Daugava shore, remains of the collapsed ground floor of the former southwest wing can be identified or inferred. The castle survives as ruins, with limited masonry and foundation remains preserved across the site.
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