Aizpute

Aizpute (German: Hasenpoth) is a town in western Latvia's Aizpute Municipality in the valley of Tebra River, 50 km (31 mi) northeast of Liepāja.

Aizpute
Town
Atmodas street in Aizpute
Flag
Coat of arms
Aizpute
Location in Latvia
Coordinates: 56°43′N 21°36′E
Country Latvia
DistrictAizpute Municipality
Town rights1378
Government
 • MayorJuris Grasmanis
Area
 • Total6.94 km2 (2.68 sq mi)
Population
 (2020)
 • Total4,038
 • Density580/km2 (1,500/sq mi)
Time zoneUTC+2 (EET)
 • Summer (DST)UTC+3 (EEST)
Postal code
LV-3456
Calling code+371 634
Number of city council members11
Websitewww.aizpute.lv

History
Ruins of Castle Hasenpoth now Aizpute Castle, build in 13th century.

The territory of modern Aizpute was inhabited by ancient Curonians since the 9th century. St. John Lutheran church was built on the Curonian hillfort. In the 13th century during the Livonian crusade, the territory of Aizpute was conquered by German crusaders. In 1248 the master of the Livonian Order Dietrich von Grüningen ordered the building of a stone castle in Aizpute. The castle and the whole settlement became known as Hasenpoth. After the partition of Courland in 1253 Aizpute became part of the Bishopric of Courland. In 1260 Aizpute church was built.

Bishop of Courland Otto granted Magdeburg rights to Aizpute in 1378.

In the second half of the 16th century Aizpute experienced rapid development because the Tebra river was used as the main trade route for the merchants of Aizpute who shipped their cargo down to the sea. After the Polish-Swedish war all trade and shipping infrastructure was destroyed and Aizpute started to experience decline. During the period 1611-1795 it was under the power of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth as a capital of the semi-autonomous Powiat Piltynski (District of Piltene).

In 1795 Aizpute and the whole of Courland was incorporated into the Russian Empire and became part of the Courland Governorate. During the Russian revolution of 1905 Aizpute was one of the places where local revolutionists showed armed resistance to Cossack punitive units. It led to the so-called Aizpute War.

During the period of the Republic of Latvia, Aizpute became the centre of a district, but in the Soviet period it became incorporated into Liepāja District. In 2009 Aizpute became the centre of Aizpute Municipality.

Its current name is the Lettization of the German one and is officially in use since 1917.

Notable people

Twin towns — sister cities
See also: List of twin towns and sister cities in Latvia

Aizpute is twinned with:[1]

gollark: 5ε you.
gollark: Oh apioids, this file contains 7500 lines of code.
gollark: Which reminds me somehow, I should see if I can find a sane language with working LLVM bindings so I can see if it's practical to JIT-compile expressions for a graphing calculator for MAXIMUM SPEED.
gollark: Unfortunately, this is 3 hard.
gollark: I have a vague idea of osmarkscalculator™, which would be a good calculator™ (program), incorporating unit conversion, useful numerical algorithms, some symbolic maths features for things too, infinitely multivalued inverse functions via lazy sequences, etc.

See also
  • List of cities in Latvia

References
  1. "Starptautiskā sadarbība". aizputesnovads.lv (in Latvian). Aizpute. Retrieved 2019-08-31.
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