Starting from July on weekends, after restrictions of pancemic, the Turaida Museum Reserve will reopen for visitors the House of Corvée peasants, where an extensive exhibition “On the Way to the State of Latvia. Corvée peasant. Independent Farmer. Citizen” has been arranged. It informs about more than 100 years period of history from abolition of serfdom in Vidzeme, in 1819, until the adoption of law on Latvian Agrarian Reform in 1920. Exhibition is a multidimentional story about the rapid and difficult 19th century in this country – about  freedom, land, work, development of the Latvian language, education, formation of the national self-confidence  and establishment of the State of Latvia. In addition to the exhibitions already open in the Turaida Castle, also basement of the West Block has been opened, where an exhibition “The Building History of the Turaida Castle” is available. By learning the stories over a thousand years, also in future you can be acquainted with a cultural heritage of the Gauja Livs, medieval testimonies, the Economic Centre of the Turaida Estate  and Folk Song Hill, which will be celebrating the 35th anniversary this year since its unveiling on 7 July 1985.

In particular, the Turaida Museum Reserve invites  visitors to become acquainted with the exhibition “On the Way to the State of Latvia. Corvée peasant. Independent Farmer. Citizen” in the month of July, because only in this month it will be possible to visit this exhibition without an additional ticket, buying one entrance ticket for the whole complex. The historian and archaeologist, the long-term director of Institute of Latvian History at the University of Latvia, Guntis Zemītis, expressed his opinion during the feast of the exhibition’s opening ceremony: “Although the occupation failed to break the human backbone, the consequences of the occupation are still felt – we are still a “waiting society” which has not yet been able to believe in its own abilities. That is why this story, which is included in the new exhibition of the Turaida Museum Reserve “Corvée peasant. Independent Farmer. Citizen” is so important to us. In order to assess the message of the exhibition, everyone is invited to get to know the story of establishment of Latvia.