Gulbene is a city in the northeast of Vidzeme, the center of Gulbene region, 186 km from Riga. The city is located on the banks of Krustalīce and its tributaries Asarupe. The highways P27, P35, P36, P37 and Pļaviņas-Gulbene railway intersect here, which continues as Gulbene-Alūksne railway.
In written sources, Gulbena Castle District (Gulbana)
was first mentioned in the Talva Division Treaty of 1224 between the
Order of the Sword Brothers and the Bishop of Riga. During the reign
of Archbishop Friedrich von Pernstein of Riga in 1340, the Gulbene
stone castle (Schwanenburg) was built on an old traffic road about
halfway between Cesvaine and Aluksne castles. Already at the
beginning of the Livonian War in 1559 after the victory in the
Battle of Tirza, Gulbene Castle was occupied by the troops of Ivan
IV. For some time the castle was subordinated to King Magnus of
Livonia, but in 1577 it again fell into the hands of Russian troops.
As elsewhere in Vidzeme, Russian troops killed or captured most of
the population in the Gulbene area.
The castle destroyed by
the Russians was not rebuilt after the war. After the conquest of
Vidzeme, King Gustav Adolf of Sweden presented the Gulbene castle
district to his general G. Horn, but after the reduction of the
manors at the end of the 17th century, the manor became the property
of the Swedish state. The manor of Russia, Catherine II Vecgulbene
(Alt-Schwanenburg), was given to Field Marshal Burkhard Christoph
von Münnich in 1763, but in 1789 the manor came into the possession
of the influential Fitinghof family. In 1802, the Vecgulbene manor
was bought by Johann Gottlieb von Wolf and owned by Baron Wolf until
the agrarian reform in 1920. The brickyard, cheese shop, brewery and
vodka distillery gave a large income to the manor.
Until the
beginning of the 20th century, the city of Gulbene had not yet
developed, instead it was the administrative center of Vecgulbene
manor. The current location of the city was swampy and was not
considered suitable for living. Even in the place of the current
Gulbene station there was a thick alder. However, when the
Pļaviņas-Valka narrow-gauge railway was built in 1903 and the
Gulbene station was built, but near its railway repair shop, the
first residential houses began to appear near the station.
During the 1905 revolution, the rebels burned down the manor house
of Vecgulbene manor, and the Maliena Committee of the Latvian Social
Democracy took over power in the vicinity of Gulbene. It was only
from 1918 that the land of Vecgulbene manor was divided into
buildings, because earlier the owners of the manor had resisted it,
not wanting that with the development of the town, the manor could
lose the role of the surrounding center. During the Latvian War of
Independence on December 24, 1918, Vecgulbene manor was occupied by
the Red Army, the Maliena District Committee settled in the manor's
White Castle, and a prison was established in the basement. The
Malian Revolutionary War Tribunal sentenced more than 200 people
from the wider area to death. On May 31, 1919, Vecgulbeni was
liberated by the 4th Valmiera Infantry Regiment of the Latvian Army
together with the 1st Estonian Infantry Regiment and the Danish
Volunteer Company.
Vecgulbene was granted town rights in
1921, but in 1928 it acquired the status of a city and was renamed
Gulbene. In the autumn of 1928, Gulbene State Commercial and
Vocational School was opened.
The city's population grew
rapidly and in 1930 there were 3,574 people living in Gulbene -
Latvians 86%, Russians 6%, Poles 3% and Jews 2%, of whom Lutherans
77%, Catholics 10%, Orthodox 10%, Jews 2%.
During the Second
World War, the Wehrmacht line of defense stretched from Gulbene to
Livani, and during the battles of August 1944, the city was
partially destroyed.
The
complex of Vecgulbene manor (German: Alt-Schwanenburg) in the
southern part of the city was formed near Gulbene medieval castle.
The manor house, which has survived to the present day, was built in
the 19th and 20th centuries. century, when the manor was owned by
Baron Wolf.
The complex includes two castles - Gulbene White
Castle (Roman style) and Gulbene Red Castle (neo-Gothic style, now
part of school buildings).
Both castles were burned down in
the riots of 1905, but later partially restored and rebuilt. To this
day, several parts of the manor park and farm buildings established
in the 19th century have been preserved - barns, stables, an arena,
and a servant's house.
In 2008, the renovation of the White
Castle began.