Kuldīga & Ventspils – two Latvian towns

11 July 2021

River Venta, Kuldīga

Ten years ago, for my last ‘big’ birthday, I was treated to a trip to Latvia. I loved Riga, including memorable visits to the open-air museum there and to the opera to see an imaginitive production of ‘Eugene Onegin’, during which a naked man with a wolf’s head walked across the stage. What was that about? Also Tatiana performed the famous letter scene clambering about on a huge bed, typing on her laptop. I do like to see productions of my favourite opera whenever I get the chance, and this was one I won’t forget. I don’t mean to be critical – I really enjoyed it. And the Riga opera house itself is lovely.

We spent a few days away from Riga as I wanted to travel across the country to the town of Ventspils on the coast. This was by way of research for a piece of fiction I started writing a long time ago, set around 1905.  This hasn’t progressed a great deal in the intervening years but I haven’t abandoned it altogether.  Ventspils interested me because my main character has to travel back to Britain from Russia in the winter and it was common then to go to this port (then called Windau) as the sea there didn’t freeze and ships could get in and out, which was not possible for several months of the year at Russian ports further north.

We broke the bus journey from Riga to Ventspils by staying in Kuldīga. Reading my ‘Rough Guide to the Baltic States’ before the trip I’d discovered that, in the park ‘stands the Kuldīga District Museum, occupying a wooden house built in 1900 to serve as the Russian pavilion at the Exposition Universelle in Paris.’ Imagine my excitement as I anticipated seeing something like this, or part of it:

I have read a lot about the Russian pavilion at the 1900 Exposition in connection with my interest in the Russian equivalent of the Arts & Crafts movement. The Russian presence in Paris was orchestrated by Prince and Princess Tenishev, whose estate in Talashkino near Smolensk was one of the principal sites associated with Arts and Crafts. Princess Tenisheva filled the area devoted to crafts with products from Talashkino, including embroideries and carved wooden artefacts.  

I should have taken more notice of the next sentence in the Rough Guide – ‘Intended to show off prefabricated house-building techniques, it was successfully dismantled and re-erected here by a businessman eager to impress his Kuldīga-born fiancée.’ Another account says the fiancée was Parisian: ‘On the banks of the Venta River is a treasure of wooden architecture – the so-called Bangerts Villa, which relates to romantic stories and legends and was recently restored. It is said that a man known as Captain Bangerts bought the villa as a gift to present to his Parisian bride. The Kuldīga Administrative District Museum has been in the building since 1940. Since reconstruction, unique wall paintings and other interior design details have been restored, and the flat of the Bangerts family allows people to see how wealthy residents of the city lived in the early 20th century.’  It appears that the structure may have served as an administrative building within the overall Russian site at the Expo. That seems quite plausible.

So the ‘pavilion’ was not as exciting as I’d hoped. The museum wasn’t open during our short stay so we weren’t able to see inside. But Kuldīga itself is pretty, with some ancient buildings and little alleys and waterways, and a spectaular view over the river. We also enjoyed an excursion to nearby Ēdole Castle.

By the time we reached Ventspils the weather had taken a turn for the worse, so I took very few photographs there.  But we were able to see how the port looks now, compared with images of pre-Revolutionary Windau.

Like Riga, Ventspils has an open-air ethnographic museum. The houses and other buildings show that this was an area governed by proximity to the sea and its related occupations. A narrow-gauge railway runs through the site. We liked it there, despite the dreary weather.