Riga Castle: A Livonian Order Fortress and Latvian Presidential Residence
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.4
- Popularity
- Medium
- Country
- Latvia
- Primary era
- Medieval
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Medieval, Early Modern, Modern
- Civilizations
- Crusader, Livonian Order, Russian, Swedish
- Site type
- Military
- Remains
- Castle
On this page20 sections
History
Riga Castle is a medieval fortress in Latvia, founded by the Livonian Order in 1330 in the aftermath of the city’s surrender during its conflict with the order. Built as a fortified residence beside the Daugava, the castle controlled ships approaching Riga from the sea and placed the order’s authority outside the city walls. Its original form was a convent-type castle, a fortified residential complex arranged around a central courtyard.
Foundation beside the Daugava
The castle replaced an earlier stronghold associated with the Sword Brothers, a military religious order that preceded the Livonian Order. Known as Wittenstein, or White Stone Castle, this earlier building had stood in central Riga on the site later occupied by the Convent Yard. Riga’s citizens destroyed it during the Livonian civil war of 1297–1330.
The peace settlement of 1330 required Riga to surrender part of its fortifications, including the Sand and Holy Spirit towers, together with land beyond the walls containing pastures and gardens. The new order castle was erected on the former site of the Hospital of the Holy Spirit, while the hospital moved to the former site of Wittenstein Castle. This arrangement gave the Livonian Order a fortified base from which it could supervise river traffic and maintain a permanent presence beyond Riga’s defenses.
On the summer solstice of 1330, Livonian Order master Eberhard von Monheim laid the foundation stone. Construction ended in the middle of the fourteenth century, and the building became known as Monheim’s Castle. The master’s residence was transferred there from another order castle, reinforcing Riga Castle’s administrative and political role.
Conflict and fifteenth-century rebuilding
Disputes between Riga and the Livonian Order continued, and during the fifteenth century the order’s master moved his residence to Cesis. The conflict returned to open warfare in 1481–1484, when Riga besieged the castle. The defenders surrendered on 18 May 1484 after hunger and disease had weakened them. The defeated castle was then almost entirely destroyed, and townspeople carried away its materials for other uses.
After the order regained control of Riga, the city was compelled in 1491 to return captured property and trophies and to build a replacement fortress. Master Walter von Plettenberg demanded a stronger structure than its predecessor. The rebuilt castle rose between 1491 and 1515 under the direction of Niklas of Reval, creating the substantial late medieval complex that remains at the center of the present building.
Polish-Lithuanian and Swedish administration
The Livonian Order ended on 5 March 1562, when its master, Gotthard Kettler, surrendered the order’s privileges and cross in the castle’s chapter hall and recognized the sovereignty of the Grand Duke of Lithuania. Kettler became provisional governor of the Duchy of Livonia and made Riga Castle his residence.
After the Union of Lublin in 1569, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania retained its rights in Livonia as the Duchy of Livonia beyond the Daugava. From 1578 to 1621, Riga Castle housed the Polish-Lithuanian administration, including officials, a garrison, and a castellan. Its defense was assigned 300 cavalrymen and several guns.
The Polish-Swedish War of 1600–1629 brought another political change. In 1621, Riga and much of the territory beyond the Daugava came under Swedish rule. Riga Castle then became the residence of Swedish administrators, military governors, and general-governors until 1710. Its representative purpose increasingly outweighed its military function, while Daugavgriva fortress assumed Riga’s principal defensive role.
Both Polish-Lithuanian and Swedish authorities enlarged and adapted the complex. A western forecourt wing was begun in the 1640s, and an arsenal was added in 1682. The castle also served as a prison. Its prisoners included Maria Staritskaya, described as the widow of the only king of Livonia.
Russian rule and administrative transformation
Russian forces captured Riga in 1710, after which the castle became the residence of the governors-general of Livonia. Some rooms continued to function as prison quarters, reportedly including accommodation for Anna Leopoldovna, the deposed empress of Russia, and her family.
Under Russian rule, the castle lost its defensive purpose. From 1710 to 1917 it served as the residence of the Russian governor-general. When Riga became the center of the Livland Governorate in 1796, the complex also accommodated provincial administrative and judicial institutions.
Between 1783 and 1787, a new administrative corps was built on the site of the Swedish arsenal. The three-storey wing connected the main castle with the forecourt buildings and gave the complex its present eastern façade. The surrounding wooden houses were demolished, creating a spacious open area later called Castle Square. These changes recast the former fortress as an administrative center and a visible expression of Russian imperial authority.
The forecourt continued to change during the nineteenth century. The castle church was closed and demolished in 1870, while representative rooms and a governor’s apartment were established in the surrounding buildings. In 1818, on the orders of Governor-General Marquis Filippo Paulucci, former stable rooms were converted into ceremonial interiors, including the Imperial Hall, a royal study, and a royal sitting room.
Governor-General Alexander Suvorov-Rymniksky ordered major repairs to the Imperial Hall in 1860 and commissioned a broad granite staircase. During the 1860s, historical and literary societies also occupied rooms in the castle, helping to establish the complex’s later connection with museum and cultural institutions.
Latvian state, Soviet occupation, and restoration
After Latvia became independent, Riga Castle housed the offices and representative rooms of the president and prime minister. Latvia’s first presidents worked and lived there, and in 1938 the building was formally designated the residence of the President of the Republic of Latvia.
In 1921, Eižens Laube and Ansis Cīrulis were invited to redesign the interiors. From 1938 to 1939, Laube reshaped President Karlis Ulmanis’s working rooms, modernized the vestibule, built the Three Stars Tower and Festive Hall, and arranged a presidential office in the forecourt.
Following Latvia’s incorporation into the Soviet Union in 1940, the Latvian Soviet Council of People’s Commissars occupied the castle. A Pioneer Palace opened in the northern part in February 1941. Other rooms accommodated museums devoted to foreign art, Latvian history, literature, theatre, and music. During the Soviet period, the garden became a sculpture garden, and restoration work in 1958–1962 partially reconstructed the Lead and Erker towers and the White and Red halls.
The Latvian national flag was raised on the Holy Spirit Tower on 11 November 1988. After the restoration of Latvian independence, the president returned to the castle in the 1990s. The building again became the presidential residence in June 1995, with the presidential chancery also located there.
A major reconstruction began in autumn 2012, during which the presidential residence temporarily moved to the House of the Blackheads. Archaeological investigations and technical planning had already taken place during an earlier restoration stage completed in 2010. On 20 June 2013, a major fire spread from a small roof area across much of the roof. It affected about 3,200 square metres of roofing, around 600 square metres of the fourth floor, and 200 square metres of the third floor. The Red Hall was almost completely burned out, while the White, Festive, Ambassadors’ Accreditation, and Heraldry halls sustained varying degrees of damage.
Firefighting continued until the following day and was hindered by insufficient water. About 40,000 of the State Art Museum’s approximately one million exhibits were affected, while about 20,000 of the approximately 900,000 exhibits belonging to the museum of literature, theatre, and music suffered water damage. Restoration of the forecourt and eastern extension ended in 2015, and President Raimonds Vejonis returned to his restored workplace on 22 August 2016. Riga Castle is now a Latvian national architectural monument, used partly as the presidential residence and partly for museum purposes, principally by the President of Latvia and the Latvian National History Museum.
Remains
Riga Castle combines a nearly square medieval fortress with later wings, towers, administrative buildings, and ceremonial interiors. The rebuilt medieval portion measures approximately 53–57 metres on each side, encloses a paved courtyard, and has walls about 3 metres thick. Its surviving fabric records the transition from a fortified order residence to a governmental and cultural complex.
Medieval fortress
Courtyard and internal rooms
The original castle was a three-storey convent-type building organized around a square courtyard. Service and storage rooms occupied the lower floor. The second floor contained the master’s residence, the brothers’ cells and dormitory, assembly rooms, a refectory, and a chapel, with access provided by an open gallery.
The rebuilt castle of 1491–1515 retained the four-wing courtyard arrangement in a more powerful form. Its lower level held service spaces, stores, food, and gunpowder. The surviving limestone basement walls are about 3 metres thick. On the second floor, the master’s rooms, dormitory, and chapel have groin vaults, while the adjoining ceremonial halls and refectory rise to about 7 metres beneath cellular or net-like vaults. The entrance passage has a star vault.
Towers and defenses
The fifteenth-century redesign replaced four square corner towers with two large round towers, the Holy Spirit Tower at the northwest and the Lead Tower at the southeast. Smaller square towers occupied the other corners. The modern complex has six towers: the Holy Spirit, Lead, Piper, North, Erker, and Three Stars towers. The Erker Tower dates from the seventeenth century, while the Three Stars Tower was built in 1938–1939.
A broad water-filled moat originally surrounded the castle and was crossed by a drawbridge. Sixteenth-century improvements added an earth rampart and bastions, which are projecting defensive platforms. The Swedes later built a citadel to the north and joined it with the castle and bastions in a larger defensive system. After the citadel was expanded, the moat was filled to form a defensive open space that was gradually built over. Underground service and military passages have been found around the complex, including beneath the modern Sculpture Garden.
The Holy Spirit Tower stands on the Daugava side and was incorporated from an earlier Riga fortification. It may previously have served as a lighthouse for vessels on the river. Its conical roof was removed in 1818, when an observatory was installed. Pointed-arch windows belong to the castle’s architectural language, while the defensive third floor contains numerous loopholes and gun embrasures, openings through which defenders could observe or fire weapons.
Entrance sculpture
Reliefs at the main entrance portray Walter von Plettenberg and the Madonna and Child. Both are dated to about 1515 and combine late Gothic and Renaissance treatment associated with the rebuilt order castle. The Madonna relief is regarded as one of the most artistically expressive stone sculptures of its period in Riga. The original entrance reliefs were replaced by copies in 2015, while the originals were retained separately. Related late Gothic and Mannerist reliefs of Plettenberg and the Madonna and Child, both dated 1515, are also located in the courtyard.
Forecourt and administrative wings
Western forecourt building
The western forecourt building, begun in 1649, was a two-storey stone structure designed by F. Shtimer. Its projecting corner oriel was covered with full-height grotesque reliefs in knorpelwerk, a Mannerist ornamental style using elaborate cartilage-like forms. The German sculptor Daniel Ackermann created the decoration, which combines Mannerist and early Baroque forms with heraldic symbols of the Swedish royal house.
The reliefs include the Vasa dynasty’s bound sheaf, the Swedish three crowns, armed guards, and a portrait of Gustavus II Adolphus. One grotesque figure is probably a portrait of Queen Christina, who was traditionally associated with the decision to build the oriel. The decoration preserves the political character of the Swedish period within the later administrative complex.
Eastern administrative wing
A long arsenal was added on the eastern side in 1682, and the forecourt was expanded toward the northwest. The arsenal was demolished in 1783 and replaced between 1783 and 1787 by a three-storey administrative wing designed by P. I. Bock. A fourth floor was added during the nineteenth century.
Built in early Classical forms, the administrative wing contains the castle’s present eastern façade and links the main castle to the forecourt buildings. Its construction divided former two-nave halls, damaged or removed some vaulted ceilings, and introduced intermediate floors. The former stable wing later received a new third floor containing the Imperial Hall, a royal study, and a royal sitting room.
State and ceremonial interiors
White Hall
The White Hall was created in 1818 by Friedrich Christian von Breitkreutz and was originally called the Imperial Hall. Paul Hardenack remodelled it in Classical forms in 1860–1862 in connection with a visit by Emperor Alexander II. Its light coloring and present name date from the 1938 reconstruction. The 2013 fire destroyed its ceiling, which was subsequently restored using archival evidence.
Heraldry and Ambassadors’ halls
The Ambassadors’ Accreditation Hall occupies the former large palace drawing room. Ansis Cīrulis designed its interior for President Janis Cakste. The room is regarded as the most authentic surviving interior from Latvia’s first independence period in the castle and as a major Latvian Art Deco interior, Art Deco being a twentieth-century decorative style based on geometric forms and carefully composed ornament.
The Heraldry Hall was formerly the Red Hall, or the governor-general’s dining room. It was converted in 1929 for the visit of King Gustav V of Sweden. Latvian city coats of arms were painted on its ceiling, and missing arms were added during the 2015 reconstruction. Portraits of Latvia’s first four presidents and late-1920s furniture made of Karelian birch are displayed in the room.
Festive Hall
The Festive Hall opened in 1938 for celebrations of Latvia’s twentieth anniversary. Eižens Laube designed it in the manner of the wooden architecture of old Latvian castles, and it was built in six months. Its recorded area is 470 cubic metres, extending to the middle of the eastern extension.
Defects caused by the rapid construction were corrected during later reconstruction. The 2013 fire caused extensive damage, after which windows bricked up in 1938 were reopened and the musicians’ balcony at the southern end was restored. A stage had occupied that end during the Soviet period.
Presidential office suite
The presidential office suite is arranged as an enfilade, a sequence of rooms whose doorways form a continuous passage. It consists of the Green Salon, the Adjutant’s Room or Red Salon, and the Secretary’s Office or Blue Salon. The Green Salon contains paintings by Julijs Feders and a Biedermeier mahogany furniture set. The Adjutant’s Room contains portraits of Latvian rulers and a display case of state decorations, while the Secretary’s Office contains portraits of Garlibs Merkelis and Johann Christoph Brotze.
Laube created Karlis Ulmanis’s office by combining two rooms from the apartment of President Gustavs Zemgals. The oak doors behind the presidential desk, leading to the presidential apartment, came from Apriki Manor. Paintings by Vilhelms Purvitis that had formerly been displayed there were replaced after 2015 by works by Dace Liela and Liga Purmale.
Castle Square
Castle Square emerged after wooden houses around the castle were demolished in 1783. It later contained the Imperial Lyceum, the Petersburg Hotel, a parish church, and residential buildings. A Victory Column was erected there in 1817 to commemorate Russia’s victory over Napoleon. Designed by Giacomo Quarenghi, it was made of Finnish granite and measured 14.8 metres high, with a figure of Victory standing on a sphere at its summit.
The column’s pedestal carried stone posts, an iron railing, bronze eagles, Latin and Russian inscriptions, the imperial double-headed eagle, and Riga’s coat of arms. The monument was dismantled in 1936.
