Old town of Kuldīga
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How it came to be
Kuldīga lies on the Venta River in western Latvia. On 19 April 1242 the Livonian Order received permission to build a castle by the ford, and this oldest surviving mention of Kuldīga is taken as the year of its founding. By 1263 the castle and its settlements were recorded as the town of Goldingen, with rights based on those of Riga. It joined the Hanseatic League in 1368.
When the Duchy of Courland and Semigallia was created in 1561, the first duke, Gotthard Kettler, made the old Order castle one of his residences. Jacob Kettler, later the duke who sent colonists overseas, was born in the town in 1610. In 1615 a flood destroyed the bridge and a fire burned most of the wooden buildings. In the rebuilding a new market square and town hall were laid out, moving the centre away from St Catherine's Church.
Between the 16th and 18th centuries the small settlement became an important administrative centre of the Duchy. Its street layout from that period survives, lined with traditional log buildings and houses in styles brought by craftspeople from around the Baltic Sea. A house of 1670 is the oldest wooden building in Kurzeme. In 1874 a brick bridge 164 m long was built across the Venta. The old town was inscribed in 2023.
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