Viļaka

Viļaka lies in the lake and forest country of Latgale. On an island in its lake stood a religious and fortified centre known as Marienhausen. In 1293 the archbishop of Riga granted the island to Cistercian monks for a monastery, placing a church institution on the eastern edge of the Livonian world.

The archbishopric later maintained a castle on the island. Its wooden defenses were rebuilt in stone after 1516; during the Great Northern War the castle was destroyed in 1702. The site links the town's history to both medieval ecclesiastical authority and the wars that reshaped the eastern Baltic.