Karksi

Karksi, known as Karkus in German, was a castle district of southern Livonia. The Order began building its fortress in the later thirteenth century; substantial stone structures followed in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Above the steep valley, the stronghold combined a defensible site with the administrative presence of the Order. Its chapel and the church outside the gate also served the district's religious life.

The upheavals that carried Livonia from the Order's rule through later Polish-Lithuanian, Swedish and Russian power changed this landscape repeatedly. During the Great Northern War the wooden parish church burned in 1703. A replacement was built in 1730, when Field Marshal Georg Reinhold von Lieven also established a family chapel beside the approach to the castle. In 1773 the parish decided to construct a stone church among the ruins, incorporating two usable walls. Consecrated on 3 September 1778, St Peter's gave the former military precinct a lasting parish centre.