Kuldīga Castle

The castle occupied a strategic plateau beside the Venta River at the Venta rapid, with a steep riverbank to the east, impounded water from the Alekšupīte stream protecting the north and west, and a man-made moat on the south. The overall plan centred on a large square complex with a courtyard, surrounded by an outer bailey and substantial curtain walls founded of local stone. Construction made extensive use of dressed dolomite and granite, with brick used in repairs and interior fittings.

The principal building was a large three-storey convent wing forming roughly a 60-metre square, enclosing a central courtyard and rising to about thirty-three metres in height when complete. Its four corner towers projected above the roofline and the four wings were about twelve metres deep, with thick masonry walls and relatively small openings. The ground floor housed storage and service spaces while the first floor contained living apartments and halls; a chapter hall lay in the north wing and the eastern wing adjoined the castle church. Rebuilding episodes in the 17th century left traces of repairs and new floor tiles, and collapse events in the 18th century left the superstructure largely removed.

Beneath the former courtyard gallery lay a network of vaulted cellars used for provisions and weapon stores. One substantial vaulted room survives beneath the park hill, measuring approximately 7.5 metres deep by 2.8 metres wide with a vault rising some 3.5 metres. This cellar features a pointed-arch vault built from carefully worked dolomite stones and walls of large dressed dolomite blocks roughly 80 by 20 by 30 centimetres, with short outer walls that probably exceed two metres in thickness. Excavations in the eastern wing revealed a triangular cellar about 2.4 metres deep with brick steps and red unglazed tiles, an adjoining cellared doorway with a 1.8-metre-high round arch, and a contiguous room some 13.5 by 8 metres containing the remains of destroyed ovens.

Roof and floor finds reflect long use and repairs over several centuries. Most recovered roof tiles are cylindrical types typical of the 13th to 15th centuries, smaller numbers of fish-tail tiles date to the 15th and 16th centuries, and a further portion belongs to the 17th and 18th centuries; some bricks and tiles show greenish glazing. Many exposed floor tiles follow a 17th-century style, rectangular red clay pieces with edges around 17.5 to 20 centimetres and thicknesses between 5.5 and 6.5 centimetres.

The outer bailey was enclosed by a strong curtain wall with foundations two to 2.5 metres thick, built of dolomite and granite with fragments of brick set into the core. Evidence shows an internal wooden fighting walk once ran along the wall and that an inner defensive bank was constructed about 3.5 metres inside the curtain on a foundation roughly 1.8 metres wide. The west side of the forecourt held barracks, horse and cow stables and the main well, while the south contained a riding ground and the southern gate; part of the east ring wall was left open and later fitted to carry cannon.

A timber or half-timber building stood opposite the guardhouse, its remains rising to about 1.5 metres in places and aligned northwest to southeast. Foundations set into red sandy clay are shallow and the surviving wall fragments, about 50 to 55 centimetres thick, incorporated brick and small dolomite blocks and date to the 13th or 14th century. Layers of coal and slag beside this structure indicate iron-working activity, possibly a smithy.

The main entrance was formed by a square gate tower on the north, flanked by a drawbridge over the millpond; the tower likely originated in the 13th century. The castle mill occupied the adjacent pond edge and after demolition of the north tower in 1806 a mill was built on part of the tower’s foundations, with a substantial boulder foundation visible in the mill basement. Two round defensive towers were placed in the southeast and southwest corners during the 15th to 16th centuries; the southwest tower adjoined a horse stall while the southeast tower, known as the powder tower, contained a prison and produced human remains when it was demolished in 1807. Possible remnant foundations of the powder tower, about two metres thick, were reported northeast of the present museum in 2005.

Water control was a key part of the complex, with the Alekšupīte stream dammed to form a millpond and the overflow plunging over a natural waterfall about 4.15 metres high and 8 metres wide. This waterfall, later reinforced in the 17th century, powered the millworks and remains a prominent landscape feature.

On the ground today almost no large above-ground sections of medieval masonry survive. The vaulted cellar beneath the park hill remains in situ, while a mill constructed on the old tower foundations in 1805–1807 was later converted to a paper mill in 1820. The guard’s house, rebuilt in the mid-19th century from castle masonry and originally standing by 1735, also survives. Subsurface investigations in 2001 using ground-penetrating radar located buried stretches of wall and other buried structures, and recorded a deep linear anomaly aligned north to south at roughly 18 metres depth that was interpreted as a possible long underground passage.