Alūksne Castle: A Livonian Order Fortress in Latvia
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.9
- Popularity
- Very Low
- Country
- Latvia
- Primary era
- Medieval
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Medieval, Early Modern
- Civilizations
- Crusader, Livonian Order, Swedish
- Site type
- Military
- Remains
- Castle
On this page17 sections
History
Alūksne Castle is a medieval fortress in Latvia, located in the town of Alūksne. The German military-religious Livonian Order built its stone stronghold on the eastern frontier in 1342, during the mastership of Burchard von Dreileben. Designed in the rich style of Livonian Order architecture, it became the centre and commander’s residence of the Alūksne komturei, an administrative and military district governed by a commander.
Origins and frontier defence
The castle’s earliest history remains uncertain. An island castle was mentioned in 1284, when the site may have held a wooden fortress adapted from an earlier local hillfort. Another interpretation connects that date only with the establishment of a settlement. Stone construction is generally associated with 1342, although traditions place its beginning in 1341, on 25 March 1342, or identify 2 March 1342 as the date of its consecration.
The stronger stone fortress replaced an earlier wooden stronghold after conflict broke out in 1340 between the Livonian Germans and Pskov Russians over the former Adsele region. Russian attacks on the Order’s Atsele fortress encouraged the construction of new stone frontier defences at Alūksne and at Vastseliina. In 1349, under Commander Gerlach von Haren, the Order transferred its convent from Atsele to Alūksne. At least the first phase of the convent house, the residential and administrative core of a military-religious castle, was probably complete by that time.
Alūksne became one of the Livonian Order’s largest and most important fortresses facing Russia. It formed part of the outer defensive line of Old Livonia with the episcopal fortresses at Viļaka, Vastseliina, and Kirumpää, as well as the Order’s fortress at Atsele. Pskov forces attacked the new castle soon after its construction, but a force of about 300 men was repelled, with 28 attackers reportedly killed.
Medieval administration and warfare
The surrounding district developed through grants of land connected with the castle’s military role. In 1421, Livonian Order Master Sigfried Lander von Spanheim granted Gerdt Hoppele several estates. Ape manor and its settlement later developed from these holdings. The castle fief covered the large Alūksne parish, while Apekalns parish was separated from it in 1733. German landownership was encouraged as part of the frontier’s defence.
The castle and its religious community also appear in administrative records. The castle church was documented in 1432. An inspection in 1451 counted eight brothers of the Order, including one priest-brother, and listed armour for 30 knights. A visitation in 1488 described the fortress as supplied with grain, meat, firearms, arrows, armour, and other necessities.
Vytautas the Great’s Lithuanian forces burned the castle in 1406 or 1409 during campaigns against Pskov. Pskov forces returned to the frontier lands in 1478, and troops of Grand Prince Ivan III of Moscow raided the Alūksne region in 1481 without taking the fortress. By the middle of the sixteenth century, the commander could field 150 horsemen in wartime.
The Livonian War and the Polish-Lithuanian period
Russian forces raided the Alūksne komturei in June 1558, during the Livonian War, the conflict of 1558 to 1583 in which Russia, Poland-Lithuania, Sweden, and Denmark contested the territories of the weakening Livonian Confederation. The attackers burned the town and ravaged the surrounding district. A later Russian incursion that year failed to capture the castle, although the garrison of the auxiliary fortress at Atsele abandoned and burned its position.
In 1560, Russian forces under Prince Andrei Kurbski besieged Alūksne with about 20,000 men and nearly 30 guns. Some of the guns were painted wooden dummies intended to exaggerate the besieging army’s strength. After artillery partly breached the walls and fire took hold in the castle, Commander Eberhard von Syburg zu Wischlingen and the military and economic officers agreed to surrender on the condition that the defenders could leave freely. The surrender is also attributed to the castle commander Kaspar von Sibergen, identified elsewhere as Kaspar Zīberg. The former commander and other leaders were later imprisoned for giving up the fortress too readily.
After the Livonian War, the 1582 Treaty of Jam Zapolski, a peace settlement between Russia and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, treated Alūksne as the citadel of its district. The district became a starosty, an administrative territory governed for the Commonwealth, within the Cēsis voivodeship. Stanisław Pękosławski became its starost in 1582, and Albrecht Latzky was commander of the castle and voivode of the district in 1591.
Swedish and Russian rule
The castle and settlement fell to Swedish forces in 1600 but were soon retaken by Polish troops under Zamoyski. On 27 January 1601, local nobles and estate owners transferred their allegiance to Duke Charles of Sweden, who promised protection, religious freedom, and the preservation of their estates. Swedish forces under Count Gustav Horn captured Alūksne again in 1625 during the renewed Polish-Swedish War. In 1627, King Gustav II Adolf granted the castle estate to Horn, including numerous manors in the Alūksne and Apekalns parishes. Much of this estate later returned to the Swedish Crown during the reductions of the late seventeenth century.
Russian forces occupied Alūksne from 1656 to 1658 during the Russo-Swedish War and also used the fortress in the war against Poland-Lithuania. The Vallisaare Truce of December 1658 left the castle in Russian hands, while the Treaty of Kärde in 1661 returned it to Sweden. Sweden subsequently restored the fortifications. In the same year, the Austrian envoy Baron Augustin von Meyerberg stopped at Alūksne while travelling to Moscow, and a drawing from this period depicts the castle apparently intact. In 1680, the Swedes installed 22 cannon and dug two defensive ditches on the side facing the island.
At the end of the seventeenth century, the fortification master Erik Dahlberg planned to enlarge and strengthen Alūksne and to create a five-bastioned fortified town on Tempļakalns across the lake. The proposal was not carried out because resources were insufficient and the Great Northern War was approaching. This wider conflict, fought from 1700 to 1721, pitted Russia and its allies against Sweden for control of the Baltic region.
Capture, decline, and modern protection
On 24 August 1702, after a ten-day siege and severe artillery damage, the Swedish commander Florian Thilo von Thilau surrendered the fortress to Russian forces led by Field Marshal Boris Sheremetev. A firing incident during the agreed withdrawal violated the truce, and the Swedish force was destroyed. The remaining defenders, including artillery captain Wolf and the junior officer Gottlieb, were also said to have blown themselves up with part of the garrison after refusing to surrender.
The Russian capture destroyed parts of the castle and settlement. Ernst Glück, a Lutheran pastor and Bible translator, and his stepdaughter Marta Skawronska were taken prisoner. Marta later became Catherine I, the Russian empress who ruled from 1725 to 1727. Alūksne was not rebuilt after the Great Northern War because its fortifications no longer met contemporary military requirements and the site had lost its strategic importance.
In 1753, Empress Elizabeth of Russia granted the Alūksne estates to Chancellor Count Vorontsov, who sold them to Privy Councillor Otto Hermann von Vietinghoff. His son, Burchard Christoph von Vietinghoff, later sold most of the estate in separate portions, retaining the castle manor and Kalnemoisa Manor. The German Order archive was held at Alūksne in 1870 and visited by F. J. Wiedemann. In 1922, the castle manor belonged to Baron Arnold von Vietinghoff-Scheel.
Conservation of the surviving walls began in 1977, followed by archaeological excavations in 1978 to 1980 along the inner side of the south-western wall of the second forecourt. The ruins and their territory are protected as a nationally protected cultural monument in Latvia, and the castle was among the earliest stone castles entered in the country’s national cultural-heritage register. Archaeological investigation and restoration of the southern tower were completed in January 2020, after which the restored tower was used for cultural purposes.
Remains
Alūksne Castle occupied the south-western side of the 9.9-hectare Castle Island, also called Marien Island, in Lake Alūksne. The fortified complex covered approximately 80 by 180 metres and consisted of a nearly square convent house protected by two forecourts. A roughly rectangular ring of outer defences followed a north-west to south-east orientation, enclosing the principal castle and its supporting areas.
Main castle and first forecourt
Convent house
The brick-built convent house formed the central residential and administrative building. Its wings were nearly equal in length and were arranged less strictly than those of earlier convent houses. A corner tower provided strong flanking defence, while the chapel and entrance followed an arrangement comparable to that at Viljandi Castle. The building now survives mainly as ruins of the island-side outer wall and sections of foundations. Local inhabitants later removed bricks from the convent house for use in buildings in Alūksne.
Commander’s forecourt
The first forecourt measured approximately 80 by 65 metres and held the commander’s residential buildings and accommodation for his staff. A semi-circular tower stood at its north-western corner beside the lakeshore. The former gate defences were also part of this area. The late-medieval gate complex had two round towers and a drawbridge, and it remained in active use during the seventeenth century.
Second forecourt and outer defences
Garrison and supply court
The second forecourt lay south-east of the main castle and measured approximately 80 by 90 metres. It contained economic facilities, rooms for the garrison, and stores for military supplies. A wall 1.3 metres thick separated it from the first forecourt. Sections of the second forecourt’s eastern and south-western walls survive, together with parts of the south-eastern and south-western towers.
Ring wall and artillery towers
The outer ring wall was 1.4 to 1.6 metres thick and may have reached about 10 metres in height. Its mixed construction used fieldstone, brick, and dolomite. The first phase had fieldstone facings around an inner filling of rubble, brick fragments, and small stones. Limestone was later used to heighten the wall, followed by additional fieldstone.
The ring wall incorporated nine towers between 10 and 14 metres in diameter. These included a semi-circular rondeel, a rounded artillery tower built to hold firearms and withstand artillery attack, at the junction of the two forecourts. A gate zwinger, an enclosed defensive space between an outer gate and the main fortification, stood on the northern side of the first forecourt. The complex is also described as having eight defensive or watchtowers. The principal forecourt defences, including the semi-circular artillery towers or bastions, belong mainly to a later phase, especially the beginning of the sixteenth century.
Surviving towers and moat
The south-eastern corner of the second forecourt contained a round tower 11.7 metres in diameter, with walls 2.3 metres thick. On the lakeside, a large semi-circular western tower measured 10.3 metres across and had walls 1.6 metres thick. It also contained a well. A moat surrounded the castle and probably acquired a more angular form during the Swedish period. It ran as well along the defences between the gate zwinger and the north-western tower.
Southern tower and island connection
Archaeological evidence in the southern tower
The southern tower preserves evidence of several fires, collapsed floor or ceiling fragments, and a clay insulation layer that may have protected ground-floor rooms from rising water. Excavation exposed the courtyard-side wall, a window opening, the tower entrance, stairs, and a basement level. The tower was archaeologically investigated and restored in a project completed in January 2020.
Bridge and approach
A road once led from the gate to a wooden bridge about 120 metres long. The bridge connected Castle Island with the mainland through the Kapsētase peninsula and included a section that could be burned during an attack or siege. The modern access route crosses a lake inlet southward toward central Alūksne, while the historical bridge approached the island from the north-west. The former castle area also contains an open-air stage with capacity for approximately 3,000 spectators.
