Salaspils

Salaspils lies on the Daugava upstream from Riga. Its name means Island Castle, recalling a Livonian stronghold on Mārtiņsala, where a Christian church stood by 1186. In 1380 the Livonian Order built a new castle on the mainland, around which a settlement grew. Both were destroyed during the Livonian War in 1577. The place was known in German as Kircholm, and in 1605 it gave its name to a great battle. There a Polish–Lithuanian army defeated a much larger Swedish force near the church of St George, in one of the most striking victories of the Polish–Swedish wars.