Cēsis

The first settlement here was a fortified village of the Vends on Riekstu Hill, in what is now Castle Park, in the 11th and 12th centuries; the German name Wenden comes from them. The Livonian Brothers of the Sword took control in 1207 and began a stone castle on the neighbouring plateau, probably around 1214. Events of 1206 recorded in the Chronicle of Henry of Livonia are taken as the start of the town's recorded history. Cēsis was named as a town in 1323, joined the Hanseatic League in the early 15th century, and after the order's castle in Riga was destroyed in 1484 it became the main residence of the order's masters. A chronicle account of a red banner with a white stripe carried by troops from Cēsis in 1279 is regarded in Latvia as the prototype of the national flag.

The Livonian War ended that importance: during the siege of 1577 several hundred people sheltering in the castle blew themselves up with gunpowder rather than surrender to Ivan the Terrible. Polish, then Swedish rule followed, and Russian troops took the town in 1703. A road link to the Riga–Pskov highway followed in 1868 and the Riga–Pskov railway in 1889, speeding the growth of brewing, metalworking and printing.

In June 1919 Estonian and Latvian forces defeated German troops in the Battles of Cēsis, a turning point in the War of Independence. Seventy years later the town again led: Latvia's first local branch of the Popular Front was founded here in September 1988, and in October that year the red-white-red flag was raised over the New Castle.

For a town of its size, Cēsis has an unusually full cultural calendar. The Vidzeme Concert Hall, opened in 2014, gives it an 800-seat auditorium, an organ hall and a cinema, and is home to the Cēsis Art Festival — begun in 2007 as a summer mix of visual art, music, opera, theatre and film — as well as a cello festival and a festival devoted to the composer Pēteris Vasks. The town's music school is named after the composer Alfrēds Kalniņš.

Civic life is part of the culture too. Since 2015 the LAMPA Conversation Festival has filled Castle Park with public discussions between citizens, institutions, media and political parties. Cēsis bid twice to be Latvia's European Capital of Culture, and the work done for the 2027 bid became a year-long programme as Latvian Capital of Culture 2025.

National memory runs deep: the town's museum keeps collections on the Latvian flag and the 1919 battles, the Victory Monument stands in Unity Square, and Medieval Day each August brings the castle back to life. Historically the town had a substantial Baltic German community, but Latvians were a majority by 1897 and about 90 per cent of the population by 1925.

At the beginning of 2026 Cēsis had 14,899 residents, on about 19 square kilometres of the northern Vidzeme Upland, with the Gauja running for some 5 km along the town's edge. It is the administrative centre of Cēsis Municipality and a regional hub for schools: two state gymnasiums, the music secondary school, a technology and design college, branches of Riga Technical University and the University of Latvia, and a space education centre opened in 2023.

The economy grew on the 19th-century railway and road links, with brewing, food production, metalworking and printing. Today services, trade, food production, transport and logistics, forestry and the creative industries matter most, and the Cēsu Alus brewery remains one of the town's longest-standing industrial enterprises.

Daily rhythms follow the seasons: walks and canoeing on the Gauja in summer, festival evenings in Castle Park and at the concert hall, and skiing at the Žagarkalns ski centre in winter. Regional roads lead towards Riga, Valmiera, Limbaži and Madona, and the station on the Riga–Valga line links the town with the capital and Estonia.

Cēsis is a beer town first. Cēsu Alus traces its roots to 1590 and is regarded as the oldest brewery in the Baltic and Nordic countries; it is also Latvia's largest beer producer, responsible for almost two-thirds of the country's beer in 2018. Beer, alus, is the drink most Latvians choose anyway, and the 19th-century railway and road links helped the town's brewing grow.

The food is the mainstream Latvian table. Dark rye bread, rupjmaize, made from coarse rye flour, malt and caraway, has been a staple for centuries, and fried rye bread with garlic, ķiploku grauzdiņi, is a common bar starter. Speķrauši, buns filled with finely cut streaky bacon and onion, are a favourite snack, and cottage cheese, biezpiens, is traditionally eaten with boiled potatoes, lightly salted herring, spring onions and sour cream.

Hot- and cold-smoked meat and fish are common, and potato pancakes with smoked salmon and sour cream are popular. For dessert there is rye bread soup, maizes zupa, made from rye bread, whipped cream, dried fruit and cranberries. Kvass, brewed from fermented rye or black bread, remains popular. Rīgas iela and the lanes around the old town hold most of the cafés and restaurants.