Cēsis is one of the prettiest and most historic towns in Latvia: a small medieval gem in the heart of the Gauja valley, with an imposing ruined castle of the Livonian Order, an old town of cobbled streets and colourful houses, and the forest of Gauja National Park all around. Some 800 years ago it was the capital of the Order that ruled much of the Baltic, and you can still feel that past on every corner.
Its big draw is the medieval castle, one of the best preserved in the country, which you visit in a unique way: in the late afternoon or on the standard tour, each visitor is given a lantern with a candle to explore the dark towers and halls as the knights of the Order would have done, climbing spiral staircases to the top of the western tower. Next to it, the elegant 19th-century New Castle houses the regional history museum, and the manor park is perfect for a stroll.
This guide takes a practical look at Cēsis: what to see in the castle and the old town, how much admission and the lantern tour cost, how to get there by train from Riga, when to come for the summer festivals or the autumn colours, and how to use the town as a base for exploring the Gauja valley along with Sigulda and Turaida. It's an unmissable Baltic stop where medieval history is still very much alive.
Cēsis was born in the early 13th century, when crusaders of the Livonian Brothers of the Sword settled around 1208 in the hillfort of the Vends (hence its German name, Wenden) and built a stone castle above the Gauja valley. For centuries it was the capital and heart of the Livonian Order, the order of warrior monks that ruled much of present-day Latvia and Estonia, and its Grand Master lived here. In 1577, during the Livonian War, some 300 people sheltering in the castle took their own lives by blowing it up with gunpowder rather than surrender to the army of Ivan the Terrible, one of the most tragic episodes of the period. The town then passed through Polish, Swedish and Russian hands, and in the 19th century the New Castle was built beside the ruins. In 1919, Cēsis was the scene of a decisive battle in the Latvian War of Independence. We tell the whole story on our history page.
Read the full history ↓The historic heart of Livonia, with the Gauja valley, the castles of the Order and the medieval town of Cēsis, birthplace of the Latvian flag.
Read the history of Vidzeme: the Gauja valley →A local guide tells you in half an hour what no sign at the site will ever explain. We look ours up on Civitatis: guided in Spanish and booked online with no fuss. They have 11 activities in Riga. And there are free tours here: you book without paying and tip the guide whatever you think at the end, so trying one costs you nothing. Have a look below: tap any of them to see them all.
They depart from Riga, 81 km away. If you book from this link we earn a commission and you pay no more.
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Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Cēsis's German name, Wenden, holds the key to its origins. Before the castle existed, this hill above the upper Gauja valley was home to a people called the Wends (vendos), whom medieval chronicles describe somewhat vaguely: probably a Baltic or West Slavic group displaced from other lands, who had settled here alongside the Latgalians, one of the ancestral Baltic peoples of Latvia. The history of the town would begin on the site of their old wooden hill fort.
At the start of the 13th century, the Gauja valley lay on the path of the Baltic Crusade. From Riga, founded in 1201, German crusaders organised as the Order of the Brothers of the Sword (Fratres militiae Christi) pushed inland to conquer and Christianise the pagan peoples of the interior. Around 1208, the Brothers of the Sword moved in among the Wends, took over their fortress and strengthened it with stone walls that gradually replaced the old wooden defences.
That was the beginning of Wenden Castle, the seed of the future Cēsis. Its position was strategic: it controlled the route through the Gauja valley and the roads into inland Livonia. What started as a forward post of the conquest would, within a few decades, become the heart of an entire state.
After the Lithuanians and Semigallians defeated the Brothers of the Sword at the Battle of Saule (1236), the survivors were absorbed into the powerful Teutonic Order as an autonomous branch: the Livonian Order. Wenden became its centre. Through the 13th and 14th centuries the castle was enlarged until it was one of the most imposing fortresses in the eastern Baltic, with massive towers, walls and an inner courtyard, and it became the usual residence of the Order's master (Landmeister).
Being the capital of the Livonian Order meant a great deal. Wenden was the 'heart of Livonia', a symbol of the monastic-military state that ruled much of present-day Latvia and Estonia. Treasures, archives and relics were kept here, government decisions were made here, and the masters of the Order were buried here. Their tombs can still be seen in St John's Church, built in the late 13th century as the Order's church. The town that grew up below the castle received town rights, joined the Hanseatic League and prospered through trade.
For almost three centuries, Wenden was one of the most important strongholds in the Baltic. But the Order's power, like the whole medieval world it stood for, was nearing its end. The 16th century would bring the Protestant Reformation, which undermined the religious legitimacy of the warrior monks, and above all a devastating war that would wipe out the map the Order had drawn.
The Livonian War (1558-1583) was the great catastrophe. The Russian tsar Ivan IV, 'the Terrible', invaded Livonia looking for an outlet to the Baltic, and his advance set off a free-for-all between Russia, Poland-Lithuania, Sweden and Denmark over the ruins of the Order's state, which was dissolved in 1561. Wenden, the former capital, was caught in the middle of the storm and changed hands several times.
The most famous and tragic episode came in 1577. Ivan the Terrible's army besieged the castle and bombarded it for days. About 300 people had taken refuge inside: soldiers, townspeople, women and children. Realising that resistance was impossible, and fearing the well-known brutality of the Russian troops, they made a desperate decision. Instead of surrendering, they gathered in one of the towers, set out several barrels of gunpowder and blew themselves up. The blast was heard for miles around. That mass suicide, one of the darkest events in Europe at the time, left a lasting mark on the place's memory.
The castle was badly damaged. In the following years, Wenden passed to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, which made it the capital of a voivodeship, and it was fought over again. In the 17th century it fell to the Swedish Empire, and the wars of the period, including the Great Northern War at the start of the 18th century, finished off the fortress. All that remained of the Order's proud capital were the majestic ruins we visit today.
After the Great Northern War the whole region became part of the Russian Empire, but local power stayed with the Baltic German nobility, the barons who ran the estates and the Latvian peasants who worked them. In Wenden, the Sievers family acquired the property in the 18th century. In the early 19th century they built a new manor house beside the medieval ruins: an elegant residence, now known as the New Castle of Cēsis, surrounded by a romantic landscape park with a pond that reflects the old towers.
Meanwhile, the town carried on as a centre of trade and crafts in Vidzeme. In 1878 the railway arrived, linking it to Riga and the interior and boosting tourism to the Gauja valley. Cēsis became known for its fresh air, its brewery (the historic Cēsu alus, one of the oldest in Latvia) and its medieval heritage, which began to draw travellers and scholars.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, as Latvian nationalism awakened, Cēsis also took on strong symbolic value. Tradition links the town to the origin of the Latvian national flag, red-white-red, whose design goes back, according to medieval chronicles, to a banner used by the tribes of this region. That sense of identity would come fully into its own in 1919, at one of the turning points in the country's history.
When Latvia declared independence on 18 November 1918, after the Russian and German empires collapsed in the First World War, the new state had to fight to survive. In 1919, in the middle of the War of Independence, Latvian and Estonian forces met German troops of the Landeswehr and the Freikorps near Cēsis; the Germans aimed to keep Baltic German rule over the country. The Battle of Cēsis (Cēsu kaujas), in June 1919, ended in victory for the Latvian and Estonian armies and was a founding moment: it secured the young independence and stopped the plan to restore the power of the German barons. It is still commemorated every year.
The 20th century, however, brought new occupations. Latvia was annexed by the Soviet Union in 1940, occupied by Nazi Germany between 1941 and 1944-45, and then absorbed into the USSR again for almost half a century, with the deportations and repression that scarred the whole country. Cēsis came through that period with its heritage intact, and when independence was restored in 1991 it could look back on its history with pride again.
Today Cēsis is one of Latvia's best-loved towns: a destination for culture and nature that combines one of the country's best-preserved medieval old towns, the Order's great castle (which you explore by candle lantern, the old-fashioned way), the New Castle with its museum, summer festivals and the surroundings of Gauja National Park. Eight hundred years after the Brothers of the Sword fortified the Wends' hill, the old capital of Livonia is still a place where you can almost reach out and touch history.
