On lighthouses

Latvia's maritime history told through stories about its lighthouses. From Hanseatic merchants, through Courland's golden age, to the dark years when the Soviet Union turned the coastline into a military fortress and to today. Three lighthouses highlighted and a road trip!

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Transcript

On lighthouses

Lights at the edge of Europe

In a few days’ time, I will take a ferry from the Latvian port of Liepāja on the country’s western coast, where the Baltic Sea doesn't so much meet the land as sometimes argue with it. I’m therefore thinking about the sea and all things maritime.

In this episode, I want to talk about lighthouses.

Now, I know what you might be thinking — lighthouses? Isn't that a bit… niche? But bear with me. Once you start pulling at this thread, you find yourself unravelling the fabric of Latvian history. You find amber merchants, a league of traders, a forgotten colonial empire, Cold War watchtowers, and engineers building islands out of nothing in the middle of a freezing sea. And somewhere in all of that, you find Latvia itself.

I live in Rīga, and a few of my neighbours are, or have been, professional sailors. One works on cargo ships travelling the international seas for six months at a time, and another is retired. My next-door neighbour, an engineer, tells me stories that got me thinking: how deep does Latvia's relationship with the sea actually go?

So today, we're going to find out.

We'll sail through history: from the Hanseatic merchants of medieval Rīga, through Courland's golden age, to the dark years when the Soviet Union turned this coastline into a military fortress. Then we'll meet three lighthouses, each one extraordinary in its own way, before I take you on a road trip along the Kurzeme coast, from Liepāja to Cape Kolka.

Let's light the lamp.

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A nation shaped by the sea

To understand Latvia and the sea, you have to start with geography. Latvia has a Baltic coastline of about 500 kilometres. That's not enormous by global standards, but it includes some strategically priceless real estate: ports that don't freeze in winter, sheltered estuaries, and a position right in the middle of the Baltic's most active trading corridor.

As far back as the 11th century, the amber trade was already drawing merchants to these shores. Amber, the golden fossilised resin that still washes up on Latvian beaches today, was among the most prized commodities in the ancient world. Roman traders called the Baltic the Amber Sea. Long before Latvia existed, people on this coast were already trading, fishing, and navigating.

Then came the Hanseatic League.

If you're unfamiliar with the Hanse, think of it as the medieval European Union of trade: a network of merchant guilds and coastal cities that dominated commerce across the Baltic and North Seas from the 13th to the 17th century. At its peak, the League comprised around 200 cities and towns, and Rīga was one of its most important members.

Rīga joined the Hanseatic League in the early 13th century, and its strategic position on the Gulf of Rīga made it a pivotal hub linking Western Europe's appetite for raw materials with the vast hinterland of Russia and the eastern Baltic. Ships from Germany arrived laden with cloth, spices, and salt, and departed with flax, hemp, timber, furs, wax, and grain. The old town of Rīga, with its winding medieval lanes and merchant guildhalls, is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site and the physical legacy of that trade.

But here's what surprised me when I started researching this episode: it wasn't just Rīga. The port of Ventspils, known as Windau at the time, was also a Hanseatic city, first mentioned in written sources as a port in 1263. In the 17th century, it became the centrepiece of something quite extraordinary.

Enter Duke Jacob Kettler of Courland.

Courland, known as Kurzeme in Latvian, is the western region of Latvia, the very coastline we'll drive along later. In the mid-17th century, it was a small duchy, a vassal of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. On paper, it had no business being a maritime power. But Duke Jacob, who ruled from 1642 to 1682, was an extraordinary figure. He built one of Europe's largest merchant fleets, with his main harbours at Ventspils and Liepāja. More than 135 vessels were built in his shipyards. And then, this still astonishes me, he sent those ships to the Caribbean and West Africa. Do listen to my podcast, ‘On Tobago’.

Courland established a colony on the island of Tobago in 1654. A bay on the island is still known as Courland Bay. The Duchy also leased territory on the Gambia River in West Africa, where it built Fort Jakob. This tiny Baltic duchy, from what is now Latvia, had a colonial empire in the tropics. It didn't last, as the larger European powers eventually squeezed Courland out, but for a few decades, ships flying the Couronian flag crossed the Atlantic.

The 19th century brought a different kind of maritime dominance. When the Duchy of Courland was absorbed into the Russian Empire in 1795, the ports of Ventspils and Liepāja found a new purpose: they became the Russian Empire's primary ice-free Baltic ports. Saint Petersburg and Kronstadt froze for months every winter, but Ventspils did not. By the end of the 19th century, enormous construction projects were underway, such as new berths and warehouses. Rīga was booming too, exporting not just flax and timber but, by the early 20th century, Russian butter and eggs to Western Europe. By 1906, 60 per cent of Russia's butter exports and 40 per cent of its eggs passed through the port of Rīga.

During the interwar period of Latvian independence, the 1920s and 1930s, Latvia developed its own merchant marine and maritime identity. Sailors became a respected profession. The sea felt like a resource, an opportunity.

And then came the Soviets.

The Soviet occupation of Latvia, which began in 1940 and was interrupted by the German occupation, resumed after World War II and lasted until 1991, transformed the western coast of Latvia in ways that are still visible today.

The entire Kurzeme coastline, the very stretch we're going to drive along, was a closed zone during the Cold War. Soviet border guards controlled every metre of it. Civilians were allowed on the seafront only in daylight and only at designated places. Every evening, the sand was ploughed to a width of about six metres so that footprints would show if anyone tried to cross. Observation towers with powerful searchlights stood at regular intervals, capable of illuminating an object 22 to 25 kilometres out to sea. Specially trained dogs patrolled alongside their handlers.

This wasn't about defence in any conventional military sense. It was about containment. Latvia lay on the western edge of the Soviet Union, and the border with the free world was a short boat ride across the Baltic. The Soviets were terrified that Latvians might try to leave, or that foreign agents might try to enter.

Liepāja, at the southern end of our road trip, offers the starkest picture of this militarisation. The northern part of the city is called Karosta, which literally means "War Port". It was built as a Russian Imperial naval base in the 1890s and, during the Soviet period, housed the Baltic Fleet's submarines, stored nuclear weapons, and, at the height of the occupation, held up to 30,000 military personnel. Civilians in Liepāja were not allowed inside. It was a city within a city, sealed off from the people who lived next door.

The lighthouses along this coast didn't disappear under Soviet rule, as they were deemed too essential for navigation, but they were militarised, surrounded by restrictions, and incorporated into the apparatus of border control. The keepers who tended them lived under constant surveillance.

And then, in 1991, Latvia regained its independence. The Russian border guards left. The ploughed sand was left to the wind. And a whole coastline opened up again — wild, beautiful, and in many places barely changed from what it had been before any of this happened.

Today, Latvia is rebuilding its maritime identity. Latvia has a 500-kilometre coastline, ten ports, and intensive shipping activity. The Latvian Maritime Academy, now part of Rīga Technical University, has around 800 students. But here's a bittersweet footnote: there are currently around 9,891 registered sailors in Latvia, a 24% drop since 2016. Young people are still going to sea, but in smaller numbers. My neighbour says he can afford the nice home he lives in and cover his young family’s living expenses because pay on international vessels is genuinely excellent. But the sea is a hard life. He is often away from home for six-month stretches, and Latvia is full of other opportunities now.

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Three towers, three stories

Now I want to introduce you to three lighthouses. They're each quite different — different ages, designs, and stories — but they're all on the same stretch of coast, and together they tell you a great deal about this place.

Oviši — The oldest flame

Let's start at the very beginning. Oviši Lighthouse is the oldest functioning lighthouse in Latvia. It stands on a small promontory about 360 metres from the shoreline, roughly 30 kilometres north of Ventspils, and dates from 1814.

But the story of this spot goes back much further.

The name itself is a clue. The promontory’s old name was Lusesort — or sometimes Lyserort — derived from the Swedish words lysa, meaning "to burn”, and ort, meaning "cape" or “place". The place where things burn. Since the 11th century, bonfires and tar barrels have been lit here as navigational markers for passing ships. For eight hundred years before the lighthouse was built, someone tended a fire on this point.

Construction of the current tower began in 1809, but Napoleon intervened. The wars sweeping Europe disrupted the project, and the lighthouse wasn't completed until 1814. When it was finally finished, it was a remarkable piece of engineering: a massive stone cylinder, 37 metres high, built in a double-cylinder design. The outer wall has a diameter of 11.5 metres; inside it sits a second, inner cylinder just 3.5 metres across. The walls are more than half a metre thick.

That double-cylinder design isn't just structural. In the 18th and 19th centuries, such lighthouses were deliberately built to serve as defensive fortifications. This tower could withstand an assault. It's a lighthouse that could, if necessary, become a small fortress.

But here's the darker layer of the Oviši story, the one the name was trying to tell you all along. This village, the settlement around the lighthouse, was once home to wreckers, people who made a living from stranded ships. The old maps mark it as a place of bonfires, and not all of those fires were lit to save sailors. Some, the legends say, were lit to confuse them: false lights set to lure ships onto the shallows. When a vessel ran aground, the community would strip it.

It's a grim story. Maritime historians debate whether deliberate wrecking using false lights was ever practised systematically. There's surprisingly little hard evidence for it anywhere in Northern Europe. Yet the legends persist. The name persists. And the fact that someone eventually decided to build a proper, permanent, authorised lighthouse here suggests that the authorities knew this coastline had a reputation.

Today, Oviši remains an active lighthouse — one of only three in Latvia officially open to the public, maintained by the Freeport of Ventspils. It houses the largest collection of lighthouse equipment and maritime navigation artefacts in Latvia. I have been there, stood at the foot of that tower, and imagined the eight centuries of fire that preceded it before climbing the steps inside the lighthouse.

Slītere — The temple on the cliff

Forty kilometres north of Oviši, at the edge of a dramatic cliff overlooking the Baltic, stands the Slītere lighthouse. It's a different beast altogether.

While Oviši is squat and fortress-like, Slītere is tall and slender: a round stone tower, 26 metres high, built between 1849 and 1850. But its most extraordinary feature isn't the tower itself. It's the location where the tower stands.

Slītere lighthouse is 5.3 kilometres from the shore. Not on the beach. Not on a headland. It sits on the crest of a ridge called the Blue Hills, a geological remnant of the Baltic Ice Lake shoreline, dating back roughly 10,000 years. The post-glacial landscape has left this ridge standing high above the modern coastline, and Slītere lighthouse sits at its edge. Its light was 102 metres above sea level, the highest in Latvia until it was deactivated in 1999. On a clear day from the top, you can see the Estonian island of Saaremaa, more than 33 kilometres away.

Now, the old maps of this place list its names as Domkalns, Temple Mount, and Baznīckalns, Church Hill. This was, it seems, a sacred site in pre-Christian times. Once again, the same dark legend surfaces: in the 11th century, this clifftop was notorious for misleading bonfires: fires lit to confuse passing ships, driving them onto the rocks so the wreckers below could plunder them.

It's a motif that recurs along this coastline, and you wonder whether it's historical truth, folklore, or simply the way coastal communities mythologise their relationship with the sea and its dangers.

By the mid-19th century, this ridge had become a critical point for navigation. The local baron, a Baltic German nobleman named Osten-Sacken, had been clearing trees from the cliff edge, which served as a useful landmark for sailors. The Russian Imperial authorities took notice and decided to build a proper lighthouse here in 1849–50.

But here's the twist I love most about Slītere. During the Second World War, the Germans did something that echoes those ancient wrecker legends in a strangely modern form. At night, they erected a false light near the lighthouse, a light aluminium mast raised by a hand winch, and shifted the apparent position of the light just enough to disorient Allied ships navigating the Irbe Strait. German vessels were given a correction factor to account for the offset. Enemy ships, navigating by what they thought was the lighthouse, would deviate slightly from the correct course and run into trouble. There are concrete foundation blocks visible in the meadow about 100 metres inland from the lighthouse, which may be remnants of this deception structure. The old stories made real by 20th-century warfare.

Today, Slītere is inactive. It was decommissioned in 1999, but it's beautifully preserved within Slītere National Park. It houses an exhibition on the history of lighthouses in Latvia and the ecology of the Baltic Sea, and it offers what must be one of the most extraordinary views along the entire Latvian coast.

Kolka— The island that was built

And then there's Kolka. Oh, Kolka.

Cape Kolka is the northernmost tip of the Courland Peninsula, where the Baltic Sea and the Gulf of Riga collide. Stand on the beach and watch: on your left, the open Baltic, dark and restless, with waves moving in one direction. On your right, the Gulf, shallower and greener, with waves moving in a different direction. In front of you, just offshore, the waves meet, and they do so without peace. The currents clash. The sandbars shift. Visibility drops without warning. Over the centuries, countless ships have been lost here.

A lighthouse at Kolka has been mentioned in historical documents since 1532. Originally, it seems, it was a wooden tower with a bonfire at the top. The cape has appeared on charts and been feared in sailors' prayers for nearly five hundred years.

But the current lighthouse is something special. Because the Kolka lighthouse is not on land.

By the 1870s, it was clear that lighthouses on the cape itself were inadequate as the shoals extended too far out to sea. What was needed was a lighthouse positioned well offshore. The solution? Build an island.

Between 1872 and 1875, workers transported enormous boulders by boat and sledge across ice roads in winter from the Kurzeme coast and from Estonia. Stone by stone, they built an artificial island in the sea, roughly 5 kilometres offshore from the cape, covering about 2,000 square metres. The metal tower, some 21 metres high, was manufactured in Saint Petersburg and delivered by sea in sections, like a flat-pack lighthouse. A wooden lighthouse was lit in June 1875, while the permanent tower was under construction. A genuine Paris foghorn was installed alongside it. The lighthouse was officially commissioned on 1 July 1884.

Think about what it took to staff that lighthouse. Keepers lived on a tiny artificial island, completely surrounded by the sea, several kilometres from the nearest land.

The lighthouse was automated in 1979, and the island has been unmanned since. Today, you can see it from the shore on a clear day, or through binoculars, a white cylinder on a concrete-armoured island, rising from the sea, blinking its two white flashes every 15 seconds. You cannot visit it. It's off-limits to the public. Yet somehow that makes it more compelling. It sits out there in all weathers, doing its job, entirely alone.

Cape Kolka itself was among the most restricted areas in Soviet Latvia. With military radar stations and border guard installations, Kolka was inaccessible to civilians for decades. When independence came in 1991, the whole area was opened up, and people discovered a cape that had been essentially frozen in time. Wild. Pristine. And inhabited, at least in part, by the remnants of one of Europe's most extraordinary indigenous communities.

The Livonians, or Līvi in Latvian, are a Finno-Ugric people who were the original inhabitants of this coastline. At Kolka, you are at a crossroads of everything: geology, maritime and military history, indigenous culture, and the raw power of the sea. No wonder people feel that the air there is different.

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The road trip: driving the Kurzeme coast

Right. Let's get in the car.

The drive from Liepāja to Cape Kolka is roughly 200 kilometres along the coast. You could do it in three hours if you didn't stop. But you're going to stop. That's the point.

I recommend an overnight or two, because this isn't a road trip to rush. The coast road here is one of those drives that feels genuinely different from ordinary motoring. The land is flat, the forests come right down to the road in places, the sea is always nearby, and every now and then you crest a rise or turn a corner, and there it is: vast, grey-green, and shining.

Starting point: Liepāja

Begin in Liepāja, Latvia's third city, known as "the city of wind", famous for its sandy beach, thriving music scene, and remarkable, unusual history.

Don't skip Karosta, the old Soviet naval base in the northern part of the city. Yes, it's a bit grim in places — the Soviets left in 1994 and took nothing with them except their weapons — but it's extraordinary. The St. Nicholas Orthodox Maritime Cathedral is among the most beautiful buildings in Latvia. The ruined forts on the seafront are genuinely dramatic. The prison, where you can take part in an interactive "prisoner for the night" experience, is unsettling. Karosta is a place that tells you what the militarisation of this coast really meant.

Take your time in Liepāja. Walk along the beach. Eat at a nice cafe or restaurant. Then head north.

The coast road north

The road north from Liepāja hugs the coast, more or less, passing through a succession of small villages, nature reserves, and dune landscapes. There are a few stops I'd flag specifically for the lighthouse theme.

Akmeņrags, about 35 kilometres north of Liepāja, is worth a detour. This lighthouse stands at one of the most genuinely dangerous navigation points along the entire Baltic Sea coast: a stony sandbank extends nearly 4 kilometres out to sea, with depths of barely two metres. The current tower was built in 1921 (the previous one was destroyed in the First World War) and stands 35 metres tall. You can climb it. 126 steps to the viewing gallery.

Continue north through Pāvilosta, a charming little town worth a coffee stop, and on through the South Kurzeme nature areas. Užava lighthouse, built in 1879, damaged twice in the World Wars, and restored each time, is one of the most romantic-looking on the coast. Nineteen metres high, it stands 46.5 metres above sea level and offers one of the loveliest views of the Baltic shore. Open to visitors in season. Oh, and they brew excellent beer in Užava. Naturally, it is called Užava.

Ventspils — The port that outlasted empires

Ventspils deserves a proper stop. This is a city that has survived everything, from Hanseatic dominance and Courland's golden age to Russian Imperial incorporation, Soviet occupation, and the abrupt withdrawal of Russian oil transit revenue in the 2020s. It's still standing, genuinely attractive, and has a history of maritime enterprise dating back to 1263.

The Livonian Order's castle is here: the oldest and only surviving medieval building in the city. The port itself is fascinating to walk around, with the old and new coexisting. And the connection to Duke Jacob and his extraordinary merchant fleet gives the city a swagger that feels justified.

After Ventspils, the road north enters a different kind of landscape. You're getting closer to the Slītere National Park. The forests become denser. The villages become fewer.

Oviši lighthouse

About 30 kilometres north of Ventspils, turn off onto the stone road to Oviši. The lighthouse is 360 metres from the shoreline. Follow the signs and then park and walk. 

The approach is through low coastal woodland, and the lighthouse appears quite suddenly: massive, cylindrical, and much larger than you'd expect.

Miķeļtornis Lighthouse - the tall slim one

Some 15 km further up the coast, turn off the main road to Kolka and head down the stone road to Miķeļtornis. Here you will find the tallest lighthouse in Latvia, standing at 56 metres. It was built in 1885 and rebuilt in 1957. The slim white concrete tower rises above the village and dunes. It is a working lighthouse and is closed to the public. However, Miķeļtornis, sometimes called Miķeļbāka, is a great place to stay overnight. The campsite there is spacious, right by the sea, with cabins and grass pitches for tents and campervans. 

Slītere National Park and the lighthouse on the cliff

Head back to the main road and continue north into the Slītere National Park. The Blue Hills ridge, the ancient shoreline, becomes visible as you drive through: a distinct escarpment rising above the coastal plain. Turn right, following the signs to Dundaga, and drive uphill until you reach the lighthouse car park. The lighthouse itself is hidden from the road, so if you reach the top of the hill, you have gone too far!

When you get there, climb to the observation platform. The view is extraordinary: behind you, the ancient ridge and the forests of the national park; in front of you, the Irbe Strait, and on a clear day, the low outline of Saaremaa in Estonia on the horizon. 

The final stretch: Mazirbe to Kolka

Head back to Mazirbe, where you can see one of the best-preserved Soviet border guard watchtowers on the Latvian coast. A reminder, in concrete and rust, of exactly what this coastline was for fifty years. You can find it by turning right at the shore end of the village, along the stone road, to a beach car park.

There is a small, convenient supermarket in Mazirbe if you need to stock up, and in summer, there are a couple of outdoor cafés, as well as places to stay overnight.

Then back to the main road for the final stretch of this tour. The road along the Livonian coast from Mazirbe north to Kolka is one of the most atmospheric drives in Latvia. This is the old Livonian homeland: tiny villages, traditional fishermen's houses, and the occasional glimpse of the sea through the pines.

Cape Kolka

And then you arrive at Kolka.

Park in the designated area near the cape, where you’ll find an assortment of cafes around the normally crowded pay car park. Alternatively, take my tip and park in the free overflow car park from the left exit at the roundabout, then walk to the tip. The path takes you through the coastal pine forest, and then the trees thin out, and you're on the beach, and the cape opens up in front of you.

Look north, out to sea. On a clear day, you'll see it: the white cylinder of Kolka lighthouse on its artificial island, five kilometres offshore. From this distance, it looks impossibly small. A white pin in the grey-green sea. Blinking. Doing its job. As it has done, in one form or another, since 1532.

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Protection

I started this episode thinking about lighthouses as objects: towers with lights. But I've come to think of them as something else. They're protection. Protection against darkness, against danger, against the indifference of the sea.

Every lighthouse on this coast was built because people were dying. Ships were running aground, cargoes were lost, and sailors were drowning. Someone decided to put a light there. 

Sailors, like my neighbours, when they're at sea, and they see a lighthouse light, breathe a sigh of relief because the lighthouse means they know where they are.

Safe sailing if you are also travelling on a ship soon.

[Illustration of Oviši lighthouse by An Englishman in Latvia. Music by Sergii Pavkin, and sound effects by freesound-community, dragon-studio and Jonathan Slater from Pixabay.]