Throughout the ages Latvia has been involved in practically every European war; values preserved for centuries have perished in the warfare ― starting from the Livonian War when in 1577 the Russian army lead by Ivan IV The Terrible destroyed practically the whole of Vidzeme; chronicles testify that one could travel on horseback for days throughout the region without meeting a single live soul and rarely hearing a cock crow. Castles, farm houses, public buildings and stone windmills were damaged on the front lines of all the wars ― everything was deliberately turned into ruins.

If only the extant landmarks could speak they would tell a very bitter history of Latvia. Sadly, that's not always possible ― during the Soviet regime churches were utilised as storehouses, all the church property was pillaged and bells taken down and recast. We burnt down the manors ourselves in 1905 as an answer to the autocracy regime and the rule of the German barons. They executed our people and so we thought that by burning down the libraries of the barons, destroying the style furniture and the Old Masters’ paintings which belonged to the German aristocracy, by smashing the fine china we are avenging the victims. We had no idea we would be scurrying around, gathering the lot back together again like a diligent colony of ants — because the castles belong to us now.

Whatever has been left is our unique cultural heritage. More than 8.5 thousand objects have been listed as protected monuments, among them 3357 architectural, 2495 archaeological and 2414 art monuments and as few as 113 historical and 44 urban planning monuments. These are landscapes of heritage value, ancient burial places, churchyards, parks, sites of historical events and homes of prominent persons, historical city centres, buildings and architectural groups, works of art, objects of interior with historic, scientific and artistic value.

We don't have the Alps, Stonehenge or peacefully idyllic Swiss mountain lakes. But we're aware of every tiny corner of our wildlife. Most of the natural preserves are just begging for a painter's brush. There are places in Latvia which would make you sigh: ― Oh my God, how beautiful! ― as well as rare and protected objects of nature, unique secular trees, beautiful and mysteriously overgrown parks, deep millponds and conservancy areas with lots of birds and wild animals. The greatest value of these natural preserves is the virginality, freedom of the restrictions imposed by technology and their public accessibility.

Unearthed archaeological monuments also belong to the Latvian cultural heritage. There are plenty of castle mounds hidden in the seemingly flat Latvian terrain. We place boulders with special signs by the plague burial grounds; we know the sites of ancient settlements. It would never occur to us to build highways across old graveyards. The fact that the Riga historical centre was included into the UNESCO list of cultural heritage in 1997 is a sign that the heritage value of the Latvian cultural monuments has been acknowledged.

We have plenty of important monuments of town planning and architecture which we are restoring ― within the limits of our resources. Even the earth under the streets of Riga with the occupation layer which provides archaeological evidence of human lives is a monument. We would have more of those, not just the castles of Turaida, Bauska, Ventspils, Rundāle, Jelgava and the historical centres of Kuldīga and Cēsis ― if it were not for those wars and vandals.

Our pre-war farm houses were built from ecological building materials, they had (for those times) modern cattle-sheds and a telephone in each home. Living in farmsteads seems to have enhanced our aloofness, a typically Latvian trait of character. It's with the farmstead type of rural development that we stand out in the context of the European cultural heritage.

We have more than a hundred historical landmarks commemorating the most important places, events and personalities in the history of Latvia: the historical old town centre of Riga, the Āraiši Lake Castle, the Gulbene-Alūksne narrow-gauge railway complete with the old locomotive engine. And the bridge across the Venta is the longest medieval aqueduct in the whole of Europe.