Convent Courtyard

Brief information

In the Convent Courtyard, the oldest element is hidden not in the name, but in the preserved building of the order’s Church of St. George. It is considered a surviving part of the first order castle of Wittenstein, destroyed in 1297. This is why this Riga courtyard reads not as a single house, but as the remnant of a place where the very function of the territory changed several times.

At first, these were the holdings of the Livonian Brothers of the Sword, then the Hospital of the Holy Spirit, and later the territory passed to the Tertiary monks. After the Order’s residence was moved, a shelter, that is, a convent, was set up in the vacated premises. In 1994-1996 the complex was reconstructed; hotels and a porcelain museum opened in the buildings on Kaleju Street. Thus the old courtyard preserved not one era, but traces of constant reuse.

What to notice right away

You can compare three levels of this place. The first is the layout of the courtyard itself as an area between Skarnu and Kaleju Streets: it is not a freestanding monument, but a cluster of buildings within the Old Town. The second is the Church of St. George, important as a preserved part of Wittenstein Castle. The third is the extensions: they were not simply added later, but conceal the castle chapel of St. George, first mentioned in 1208.

It is also worth noting the trace of the church’s former use. When it ceased to be a church and became a granary, its vaults, columns, and architectural details disappeared. This fact changes how one looks at the building’s simplicity: part of its “modesty” may not be the original design, but the result of losses and utilitarian conversion.