Smiltene Municipality
Built by the Livonian Order (1367), destroyed by Ivan the Terrible (1559), burned by Peter's troops (1702). Catherine II rebuilt it. Town rights came in 1920.
Smiltene suffered the standard fate of Livonian towns: built by crusaders, destroyed by Russians, rebuilt, destroyed again. The castle first appears in 1359; by 1367-70, Livonian Order master Wilhelm von Frimsheim had constructed the stone fortress. The archbishops of Riga spent their summers here.
In 1481, Russian troops attacked during the Livonian-Moscow War. In 1556, the Order master imprisoned Archbishop Wilhelm of Brandenburg in this very castle during the Confederation's collapse. In 1559-1560, Ivan the Terrible's troops destroyed both castle and town. The Great Northern War brought more destruction: in 1702, Russians burned the church, manor, 19 town houses, and 204 peasant homes, taking the church bell to Pskov.
Catherine the Great gave the manor to Vidzeme's governor general, George Brown, who rebuilt it between 1763 and 1771. Those buildings survive today as Kalnamuiža. The town received formal rights only in 1920, with Latvian independence.
Smiltene sits 132 km from Riga in the Vidzeme Highland, on the Abuls River. By 2026, it faces the same challenge as all provincial Latvian towns: how to retain population when the capital offers more. The castle survived; whether the town can survive peace is less certain.