Bauska Castle is situated around 70kms south of Riga on a peninsula at the confluence of the Mūsa and Mēmele rivers. The hill was originally the site of a Semigallian fortress in ancient times, the Semigallians being a pagan Baltic tribe. The castle is split into two distinctive parts, a ruined mid 15th century Livonian Order castle and a late 16th century palace. Construction on the initial phase of the castle started around 1443 under the direction of the Master of the Livonian Order Heidenreich Vinke von Overberg. The purpose of the castle was to extend the crusaders power into areas originally controlled by the Semigallians and also to protect the trade route into Riga.
By the 1550s the Livonian Order’s power was in decline due to repeated attacks from Tsarist Russia and its own internal wrangling ultimately ending in the dissolution of the order by 1562. Three years previous to this, in 1559, the Livonian order passed sovereignty of the town and castle to Poland and in 1562 it became home to Gotthard Kettler the first Duke of Courland. The Duke added a residential palace to the castle and fortified it further with towers and enormous earthen ramparts which are still impressive to this day. The 17th century saw the castle repeatedly attacked, besieged, captured and damaged during the Polish-Swedish Wars which happened repeatedly between 1600 and 1629. In the early 18th century during the Great Northern War between Sweden and an alliance of countries led by Tsarist Russia, including Denmark, Norway, Lithuania, Poland and Prussia caused significant damage to the castle. In 1705 the castle was under the control of Swedish forces who were besieged and ultimately surrendered the castle to the Russians. The Russians occupied it for a year and before leaving blew up huge sections of the castle, thus making it entirely uninhabitable. It remained abandoned until the 1970s when major restoration work began to be undertaken on the castle, with the dukes palace fully restored in the 1990s.
Bauska Castle is around an hour and twenty minutes from the capital of Latvia, Riga, and is well worth a visit as it is also close to the magnificent Rundale Palace
GPS: 56.40366, 24.17362