Daugava River Bends

Latgale

Listen to the landscape

The Daugava loki (bends) are eight picturesque curves – one of the few places where the natural course and flow of the Daugava has been preserved. The Daugavas loki Nature Park is located on the ancient Daugava valley between Krāslava and Naujene and is home to remarkable natural and cultural monuments – the ancient Daugava valley, the Juzefova estate park with its gully, the Vecpils castle mound with ruins of a 13th-century Livonian Order Castle and the Markova nature and history trail, as well as the Adamova precipice, the Daugava vārti (Gate), the Mālkalns spring, the Sandariški karengravas (gullies) and the Sproģi gullies, the Ververi precipice, the Slutišķi ethnographic Old Believers’ Village and other important sites.

More than 800 plant species have been identified in the Daugavas loki nature park, of which 50 are specially protected. 139 bird species have been observed, of which 33 are specially protected species of national and European importance.
Since 2011, the Daugavas loki nature park, with the Slutišķi village and the Markov castle mound, have been included in Latvia’s national list of UNESCO World Heritage sites.
In the 1990s, more than 30 000 signatures were collected protesting against the construction of the Daugavpils Hydro power plant. This was the first time in the Soviet Union that such an ambitious infrastructure project was stopped by public protests.