Ventspils
Ventspils
(vĕnts`pēls), Ger. Windau, city (2011 provisional pop. 38,645), W Latvia, on the Baltic Sea, at the mouth of the Venta River. An ice-free seaport, it exports oil brought by pipeline or rail from Russia. Ventspils also has shipyards, fisheries, and varied manufactures. The city grew around a 13th-century castle of the Livonian Brothers of the SwordLivonian Brothers of the Swordor Livonian Knights
, German military and religious order, founded in 1202 by Bishop Albert of Livonia for the purpose of conquest and Christianization in the Baltic lands.
..... Click the link for more information. and was chartered in 1314.
Ventspils
(formerly Vindava), a city and administrative center of Ventspils Raion, Latvian SSR. An ice-free port on the Baltic Sea. Railroad lines to Riga (176 km) and Liepāja. Population, 41,000 (1970).
Major center of the fish-processing and woodworking industries, Ventspils has a cannery producing one-fourth of Latvia’s canned fish and a woodworking plant (lumber, pressed sawdust, furniture, and barrels). Other industries include a fan factory that also makes radiators, a reinforced-concrete construction components plant, a meat combine, and a dairy. The city has medical and musical schools, a folk theater, a museum devoted to the history of deep-sea fishing, and a museum of regional studies.
Ventspils was founded in 1242 and received the rights of a city in 1378. It was part of the Hanseatic League in the 14th- 16th centuries. The Convention House (completed in 1290) still stands. There are two works by the sculptor J. Zarin’ in Ventspils: a monument to J. Fabricius (1954) and one to the fighters of the Revolution of 1905 (1961).