Vecpiebalgas vecajos kapos (Vecpiebalgas austrumdaļā, pa ceļam uz "Saulrietiem" un "Vēveriem") apskatāms piemineklis, kas veltīts brāļu Kaudzīšu romāna "Mērnieku laiki" personāžam - Lienai. Piemineklis uzstādīts 1987. g. (tēlniece M. Baltiņa). Pirms ceļojuma atkal ir jāpāršķirsta "Mērnieku laiki"!

The Kelme Estate is one of the last remaining provincial estates in Lithuania.  Designed in the Baroque style, it is a large and closed estate farm with many authentic buildings, gardens and bodies of water.  The geometric park is a vivid example of Baroque style, and it is divided up into various parts by alleys.  There is a viewing mound in the park.  Most of the trees are ancient, indeed, but the best part of the estate is behind it -- one large and three smaller ponds, as well as a viewing mount that is in the ancient park.

The church was built between 1640 and 1642 as a mark of respect for the king of Poland.  It was commissioned by Duke Jacob Kettler and has a confessional bench with allegoric paintings (1691), as well as three altars decorated with Rococo carvings.  There is a 16th century sculpture of the Madonna and her child.  Contact the church for a tour.

The estate owned by the dynasty of Baron Osten-Zaken was rebuilt in 1856 and 1857, because the old estate was sacked during the Crimean War (1853-1856).  At the beginning of the war, British warships bombarded Latvia's shoreline and ships with the purpose of scaring the Russian tsar.  Some of the gunfire hit Kolka, which was part of the Russian Empire at that time.  After the estate was destroyed, the so-called White House was built there with a series of ancillary buildings.  A mantel chimney was installed on the second floor, and it was used to smoke wild game (the chimney is still there).  The estate belonged to the aristocrats until 1919, when its last owner, Christian von Osten-Zaken, was shot in Tukums.  An elementary school, known as the Kolka School, was installed in the White House in 1929.  It remained open until 1961, when a new school was built.  Crafts lessons were offered at the building until 1989, at which time it was known as the Old School or the Small School.  In 1991, the Old School was taken over by the Faculty of Biology of the University of Latvia, and it has been used for summer internships for students ever since 1994.

A Latvian traditional farm with a herd of some 150 goats, offering tours of the farm and cheese for sale.  They offer also home-made ice-cream from the goat milk and a soup made on open-fire. Also latvian traditional sauna is available. The products can also be bought at the little market in Straupe.

Уютное кафе в центре Тукумса.

Время работы: пн. – сб. с 10:00 до 18:00; вс.- закрыто.

This is one of the few workshops in Latvia where things are woven with birch bark. You can look at the objects and discuss the experience of the craftspeople. They will help you to produce simple objects out of birch bark, and those will be excellent souvenirs.

The trail climbs up and down along the bluffs of lower River Pilsupe and reveals a fascinating sight of three white dune exposures (the largest is called the White Dune). The trail is 900m long, and the White Dune is ca 20m high. It has formed ca 6000 years ago, in the period of the Littorina Sea which is a foregoer of the Baltic Sea. Here the first Stone Age settlement on the North Western coast of Latvia has been found in 1934 by geologist S. Burhards. In the sand, some 500m from the sea, he found some pottery fragments, a sandstone hone, a piece of flint, parts of bones and an amber bead. He handed the findings over to the National Museum of History. In October 1934, the site was checked by archaeologist E. Šturms, who found the archaeological layer, typical for such settlements, in the landslides of the Pilsupe riverbanks. In 1936 he started larger excavations to continue by 1938. Totally seven, chronologically different settlements were detected and many artefacts found, including fragments of the so called Sārnate and pit-comb pottery, as well as some pieces of corded pottery. Based on these findings, the settlement is dated back to the beginning or middle of the 3rd millenary B.C., and it has been inhabited till the beginning of the 2nd millenary B.C. Especially remarkable are three clay figures in human shape which have probably been used for some religious cult purposes.

Since 1993, archaeologist Ilzes Loze has discovered several pit-comb ware culture settlements in large area around Pūrciems village. They are known in research literature as „the Ģipka settlements”.