Wenden Castle (Latvian Cēsu pils) is the ruins of a former Teutonic Order castle in the Latvian town of Cēsis (German Wenden). From 1297 to 1561, with brief interruptions, it was the seat of the Livonian Landmeister and the administrative center of the entire order's property in Livonia.
Built by the Order of the Brothers of the Sword in the first quarter of the 13th century, it replaced a wooden predecessor and after the incorporation of the Order of the Brothers of the Sword into the Teutonic Order under Hermann von Balk, it became the headquarters of the Livonia Mastership. By the beginning of the 15th century, Balk's successors had expanded the castle into a closed four-wing complex with three fortified outer baileys. During the 15th to 17th centuries the complex was besieged, conquered, devastated and damaged several times and finally abandoned after 1703. By that time it had already decayed.
In the 18th century, the owners at the time, the von Wolff family, had a manor house built as a new residence in the area of one of the outer baileys, and from 1812 the Sievers family laid out a landscaped garden in a romantic style. Although the first maintenance measures in 1912 were followed at regular intervals by further maintenance and restoration measures, the castle remained a ruin despite existing reconstruction plans, which is today one of the main tourist attractions of the city of Cēsis.
The complex has been listed as a cultural monument since December 16, 1998 and is one of the best-preserved castle ruins in Latvia. The castle hill called Nussberg, on which the previous wooden structure stood, has also been protected as a monument since the same day (Wikipedia).