Jana J?KOBSONE
(Riga Technical University, Kuldiga district Council, Latvia)

Abstract: Kuldiga Old Town has a number of archaeological monuments, one of them is “a medieval castle area.” After the collapse in 18th century and removal of the ruins at the beginning of the 19th century, in 1860ties this territory by the castle (built in the 13th century as the first Livonian Order castle in Kurzeme) was arranged as the main recreation park in the town with an open air estrada and later a sculpture garden and museum. However, there were no visual reflections made before of the historical context of the castle – to make the castle site, ramparts and moat interesting and understandable for the public; only textual studies were done.

At various times researchers have had the desire to make excavations in the territory of the former castle, particularly to clean and inspect the routes that branch off from the castle vault which is still visible. Such extensive excavations have not been performed so far. There have been made attempts to locate the exact site of the cast by using radar, research of historical descriptions and other theoretical methods.

Nowadays it is very important to explain the site’s history for people through visualization. It is essential to make the cultural heritage, in this case, the archaeological values, understandable and interesting for the public. In the year 2011 there was made a new plan for the town garden area by transforming it into a recreation area and marking in the land cover the historical location of the convent castle. The project provides a solution (as the next phase of the project) on how to visually exhibit excavations in the territory of the convent castle.
Within the current project, it was decided to include layers of different time periods, to perform archaeological excavations of the older layers at the castle site, to preserve the territory as one of the favourite recreation parks for the citizens as well as display 33 sculptures made by a single author, to construct the historical castle vault by arranging there a digital exhibition and create a contemporary (also in style) contribution through visualizing historic castle site, moat and establishing an open-air cinema.

Keywords: medieval castle, archaelogical monument, recreation area, former moat.