Rundāle

Rastrelli in Latvia

Duke Ernst Johann von Biron, the Duke of Courland and a favourite of the Russian Empress Anna, commissioned the Italian architect Bartolomeo Francesco Rastrelli to design Rundale in 1736. Rastrelli was in his early thirties at the time and had not yet built the works that would make him famous — the Winter Palace, the Catherine Palace at Tsarskoye Selo, and the Smolny Convent in St Petersburg all came later. Rundale was among his first major commissions, and it already shows the exuberance and organisational confidence that would define his mature style.

Construction proceeded in two phases. The main structure went up between 1736 and 1740, when Biron's position at the Russian court was at its height — he was effectively the favourite of Empress Anna and the most powerful man in Russia outside the imperial family. Work halted abruptly in 1740 when Biron was arrested and exiled to Siberia following a palace coup. He spent nearly two decades in exile before the new Empress Catherine II permitted his return. Rastrelli — by then the most celebrated architect in the Russian Empire — completed the interiors between 1763 and 1768 in the full Rococo style that had become fashionable during the intervening years. The result is a palace where the structural bones reflect one decorative era and the finished interior a later one, giving Rundale an unusual richness of layers.

Biron himself spent relatively little time at Rundale — his political life was in St Petersburg, and the duchy's affairs were managed by officials. The palace functioned more as a statement of status and aspiration than as a primary residence, which perhaps explains why Rastrelli was given considerable latitude in its design. The palace's main facade, 138 metres long, faces a forecourt enclosed by low service wings — a composition modelled on the French chateau tradition — and the approach from the main road gives an immediate sense of the scale Biron had in mind.

The state rooms

The Gold Hall — the throne room — is the centrepiece of the palace and one of the finest Rococo interiors in northern Europe. Its ceiling is covered in gilded stucco ornamentation of exceptional delicacy, and the walls are lined with mirrors and carved wood panels painted white and gold. Natural light enters through tall south-facing windows and reflects off every gilded surface, creating an effect that shifts from hour to hour through the day. The hall was used for formal receptions and, on the occasions when Biron was in residence, as a setting for the political ceremonies that ratified his position as duke.

The White Hall, used for balls and receptions, is decorated in a quieter key — white and ivory with silver highlights — and the vaulted ceiling carries a painted allegory by the Italian artist Francesco Martini. The ducal apartments, the porcelain rooms, the writing room, and the long enfilade of reception rooms have been meticulously restored over the past fifty years to conditions approaching their 18th-century appearance. The quality of the plasterwork, the painted furniture, and the silk wall hangings throughout the palace interior is consistent — this was not a building where money ran out before the finishing touches.

The restoration effort at Rundale has been one of the most sustained cultural projects in Latvia since independence. Work began in the 1970s under the direction of art historian Imants Lancmanis, who served as the palace's director for over four decades and oversaw the restoration of more than forty rooms. The furniture, paintings, porcelain, and textiles on display are a mix of original pieces recovered from various Latvian and European collections and period-appropriate acquisitions. The Rundale Palace Museum publishes detailed research on its collections and restorations — the accompanying exhibition on how the palace was restored is as informative as the palace itself.

The French garden

The palace garden, restored to its original 18th-century French formal design, covers about ten hectares immediately behind the main building. Gravel paths radiate from a central fountain, bordered by low hedges clipped into geometric parterre patterns. The main axis runs south from the palace through a series of compartments — each with its own design of clipped box and gravel — toward the garden's outer boundary wall. The proportions are those of the French baroque garden tradition, with the palace as the focal point from which the geometry of the landscape radiates.

The rose garden, planted at the southern end of the formal garden, holds more than 2,200 roses of around 600 varieties. It blooms from late June through August, and the fragrance on a warm afternoon carries across the southern half of the garden. The garden also includes a restored orangery at the east end, lime tree alleys that run parallel to the main axis, and a green theatre — an outdoor performance space formed by walls of clipped hornbeam hedges — that is used for summer concerts and theatrical performances. The garden is open on the same ticket as the palace and is worth at least an hour in its own right, particularly in the morning before the tour groups arrive.

The Duchy of Courland

Rundale is a reminder of the Duchy of Courland, a small but ambitious state that occupied western Latvia from 1561 to 1795. The duchy was formally a vassal of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth but operated with considerable autonomy, and its most energetic rulers pursued foreign policy on a European scale. At its peak under Duke Jakob Kettler in the mid-17th century, Courland maintained colonies in Tobago and on the Gambia River in West Africa, built a merchant navy of over forty ships, and established trade relationships with England, France, and the Dutch Republic. The scale of Kettler's ambitions was remarkable for a territory whose population never exceeded a few hundred thousand.

By Biron's time — a century later — the duchy's political power depended entirely on its relationship with the Russian imperial court. Biron was not even Latvian by origin; he was a minor Baltic German nobleman whose connection to Courland was administrative rather than familial. But the wealth and cultural ambition that flowed from his position at court produced buildings like Rundale — far grander than anything the duchy's modest agricultural economy might otherwise have supported. The palace stands today as a record of that moment when Courland's fortunes peaked, and of the artistry that fortune could buy.

Visiting the palace

The palace is open year-round, though the gardens are at their best from May through September and the rose garden peaks in July. Guided tours in English, German, and Russian can be arranged in advance; the unguided route through the state rooms is well-signed and includes information panels in multiple languages. Allow at least two hours for the main palace rooms and another hour for the garden. The palace cafe in the east wing is a reasonable stop for coffee and pastries, and a small shop sells reproduction prints and porcelain. Photography is permitted in most rooms without flash.

After the dukes: Rundale in the 19th and 20th centuries

After the Duchy of Courland was absorbed into the Russian Empire in 1795, Rundale passed through several owners and periods of use. For much of the 19th century it served as a country residence for Russian noble families, who used the state rooms for seasonal visits while the agricultural estates around the palace continued to operate. The interiors were altered during this period, and some of the original furnishings were dispersed to other properties or sold.

In the early 20th century, during the period of Latvian independence between the wars, the palace and its lands were nationalised and redistributed as part of the land reform of 1920 that broke up the Baltic German noble estates. The building was used variously as a school and a grain storage facility during the Soviet period — uses that contributed to the deterioration of the floors, plasterwork, and wall paintings, and resulted in the subdivision of some of the larger rooms. The restoration that began in the 1970s under Imants Lancmanis was in part a project of cultural recovery: retrieving and stabilising what had survived before further deterioration made restoration impossible. The work continues with the support of the Latvian state and EU heritage funds, and each decade of effort brings more of the original interiors back into legible condition. The most recent phase of restoration work has focused on the bedroom and dressing room suite in the east wing, parts of which were not accessible to visitors until the early 2020s.

Events and seasonal visits

Rundale Palace, Latvia hosts a programme of events throughout the year that are worth consulting before a visit. The summer season brings classical music concerts in the White Hall — acoustically one of the finer small concert venues in Latvia, with the gilded plasterwork and tall mirrors creating an environment that suits chamber music and early instruments particularly well. The palace garden hosts outdoor performances in the green theatre from June through August, and the formal parterre is illuminated on selected summer evenings. In December a Christmas market occupies the forecourt and lower rooms, with craft vendors and seasonal food stalls trading against the backdrop of the Baroque facade.

The rose garden is at its peak from late June through July, when all varieties are in simultaneous bloom — arriving in this window is worth timing deliberately. In autumn, the formal garden takes on a different quality as the clipped hedges brown at the edges and the lime tree alleys turn yellow; the garden is almost empty of visitors compared with the summer peak, and the palace interior can be toured with considerably more space to appreciate the rooms at close range.

The palace in context: Latvia's Baroque heritage

Rundale is the most significant, but not the only, Baroque manor in southern Latvia, Latvia. The Mezotne Palace — a neo-classical country house set in an English landscape garden about 20 kilometres east near the town of Bauska — was built in 1802 for the von Lieven family and is now operated as a small hotel, allowing visitors to stay overnight in the grounds. The Eleja Manor, about 15 kilometres west of Rundale, is a further example of Baltic German Baroque domestic architecture from the 18th century, now used as a cultural events venue. Together these sites make up a loose circuit of Courland-era heritage that rewards a two-day drive through the flat farmland and river valleys of southern Latvia.

The Bauska Castle ruins, 12 kilometres east of Rundale near the town of Bauska, Latvia, are worth combining with a palace visit. Built by the Livonian Order in the 15th century at the confluence of the Musa and Memele rivers, the castle served as one of the main fortifications of the Order's southern territory and later became a residence of the Dukes of Courland. The ruins include a largely intact round tower and sections of curtain wall that can be explored on a self-guided visit. From the tower there is a clear view across the flat agricultural landscape of southern Latvia — a countryside of large fields, windbreaks of birch and lime, and the occasional farmstead that has not changed fundamentally in character since the Courland period. This flat, open landscape is the geographical context for Rundale: a palace designed to command attention in a terrain that offers no natural drama, and succeeds entirely through architecture alone.

Getting here

Rundale Palace is 77 kilometres south of Riga, Latvia, near the village of Pilsrundale in the Bauska district. The drive takes about an hour via the A7 highway toward Bauska. There is no rail connection to Pilsrundale, but the palace is an easy day trip from Riga by car or on an organised tour. It combines naturally with a visit to the nearby town of Bauska, Latvia — about 12 kilometres east — which has its own 15th-century Livonian Order castle ruin at the confluence of the Musa and Memele rivers, as well as a small old town worth an hour's walk. The Bauska Museum in the castle precinct has a good local history collection. Together, Rundale and Bauska make a full and rewarding day from Riga.