Lihula

Lihula, in western Estonia, grew beside a stronghold that commanded the surrounding country. In 1220 an invading Swedish force was defeated here by Estonians. Between 1238 and 1242 the bishopric of Ösel-Wiek and the Livonian Order built a stone castle on the hill; it served as the bishopric's first seat and marked the new ecclesiastical and military order established after the Baltic crusades.

The Livonian War brought repeated changes of hands in the sixteenth century. Swedish troops destroyed the castle during an assault in 1581, and it was not rebuilt under the subsequent Swedish rule. A manor developed nearby during the seventeenth century, giving the old stronghold a new neighbour while its ruined walls recalled an earlier age of bishops and war.