Sigulda

Livonians began to settle the lower Gauja in the 11th century, and the valley was a Livonian heartland when German crusaders arrived. In 1206 the crusaders and their allies defeated the Livonians in a battle at Turaida; one likely origin of the town's German name, Segewold, is "victory forest", recalling that battle. In 1207 the Livonian Brothers of the Sword began a castle on the south bank, and in 1214 the Archbishop of Riga had a castle started at Turaida, on the north bank, where a Livonian wooden fort had stood. A third castle rose at Krimulda in the 14th century.

From 1432 Sigulda Castle was the residence of the Land Marshal of the Livonian Order. The castles suffered in the wars that followed the break-up of Livonia; Krimulda was destroyed in 1601, and Turaida lost its strategic importance during the 17th century, until by 1900 only fragments were left. The estate later passed to the Kropotkin family, who built the Neo-Gothic New Castle in 1878 beside the old ruins.

The legend of the Turaida Rose tells of a young woman named Maija, murdered in Gutman's Cave; a court record of the case dated 1620 came to light in the archives in the middle of the 19th century, and her grave by Turaida church can still be visited. Sigulda received town rights in 1928. In the Soviet period a bobsleigh and luge track was built for Soviet bobsledders and lugers, completed in 1986, and the Gauja valley became the heart of Gauja National Park, founded in 1973. Since independence it has become an important tourist centre.

Sigulda's culture is bound up with its castles and its landscape. Every summer a traditional opera festival is held on an open-air stage built in the ruins of the medieval castle, and the town festival in May is timed for the cherry blossom. Midsummer is celebrated at the Turaida Museum Reserve, where the restored castle buildings hold exhibitions on the castle's history and on the Gauja Livonians.

The legend of the Turaida Rose is the town's best-known story. Long thought a legend and taken up by many artists, it tells of Maija, a young woman murdered in Gutman's Cave — the oldest tourist attraction in Latvia, whose walls carry inscriptions from as early as the 17th century. Drinking the water of the stream that flows from the cave is said to be healthy.

Winter sport is a point of pride. The bobsleigh and luge track is the training centre for Latvia's sliding athletes and hosts World Cup races in luge and skeleton, and the town's two short ski slopes make Sigulda the country's main winter sports centre. The track's manager, the former brakeman Dainis Dukurs, is the father of the skeleton racers Martins and Tomass Dukurs. In the warmer months bungee jumping from the cable car draws thrill-seekers.

About 14,600 people lived in Sigulda at the beginning of 2024, making it Latvia's 15th-largest settlement, and the town's population has grown every year since 2000. Around 86 per cent of residents are Latvian, 9 per cent Russian and 3 per cent Belarusian. In 2020 the town's territory was enlarged by adding Pelte and Ķipari and some surrounding countryside.

Tourism is the main business: castles, the national park, adventure attractions, guesthouses and cafés. Trains on the Riga–Valga line and the A2 road link it with the capital. Schools include the state gymnasium, and an art school and a music school share the building known as the White Grand Piano.

The rhythm of the year follows the seasons and the visitors. Summer weekends bring crowds from Riga, sometimes with traffic jams on the road; autumn colour draws walkers to the valley; and winter turns the town towards skiing, sledging and races on the track.

Sigulda's cafés serve the food of Latvia. Dark rye bread, rupjmaize, made from coarse rye flour, malt and caraway seeds, comes with every meal. Grey peas with bacon are a traditional favourite, especially at Christmas, and speķrauši, buns filled with finely cut streaky bacon and onion, are a popular pastry. Cottage cheese, biezpiens, is eaten with boiled potatoes, lightly salted herring, spring onions and sour cream.

Mushroom soup is among the soups Latvians eat, both hot- and cold-smoked meat and fish are common, and potato pancakes with smoked salmon and sour cream are very popular. Summer brings cold borscht, made with kefir or soured milk, boiled beets, cucumber, radish, egg and herbs; and rye bread soup, maizes zupa, with whipped cream, dried fruit and cranberries, is a traditional dessert.

At midsummer the table holds Jāņu siers, a fresh cheese flavoured with caraway, with beer, the most consumed alcoholic drink in Latvia. Kvass, brewed from fermented rye bread, remains popular.