Graži vieta, Vidzeme
The ruins of Rūjiena Castle stand on the edge of today's Rūjiena town, on the right bank of the Rūja River. Chronicles from 1125 mention a wooden Livonian castle here, replaced in 1263 by a stone castle built under Teutonic Order Master Burchard von Hornhausen - a settlement grew up around it and was named Rūjiena. The castle guarded the border between the Teutonic Order and the Archbishopric of Riga, was repeatedly attacked by Russian forces (destroyed in 1481), and was occupied, looted and burned by Lithuanian nobility during the Livonian War in 1560. Fragments of the ring wall, 1-2 m high, survive today.