Marienhausen Castle

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View of the castle ruins in 1797 after Johann Christoph Brotze

The castle Marienhausen (also Castle Villack, Latvian Marienhauzenas pils ) was a castle in Viļaka in today's Latvia .

investment

Remains of the castle

The castle was on a small island in Lake Viļaka, at the time on the border of the Riga bishopric to the principalities of Pskov and Novgorod , today on the border between Latvia and Russia. Since the 16th century, the castle was an irregular, quadrangular fortification with large, round defense towers. Today a remnant of the wall 2 meters high and 1.6 meters wide has been preserved.

history

In 1293 Archbishop Johannes von Riga founded a monastery named Marienhausen on the island, the second after Dünamünde. Its further development is unknown. Around the 14th century a wooden tower castle was built on the island, which was expanded at the end of the 15th century and reinforced with a partial stone wall between 1509 and 1516. After the castle was handed over to the Polish king by the archbishop with eastern Livonia in 1559, it was nevertheless destroyed in 1571 by Russian troops of Tsar Ivan the Terrible. In 1583, Swedish troops damaged the castle. After that it became a regional administrative center in Poland-Lithuania . In 1702 it was finally destroyed in the Northern War and was only a ruin at the end of the 18th century.

Web links

Commons : Marienhausen Castle Ruins  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Armin Tuulse: The castles in Estonia and Latvia. Dorpater Estonian Publishing House 1942. p. 333 illustration
  2. ^ Armin Tuulse: The castles in Estonia and Latvia. Dorpater Estonian Publishing House 1942. p. 332, also p. 102 and 344 pdf .

Coordinates: 57 ° 11 ′ 38.5 "  N , 27 ° 41 ′ 21.7"  E