For travelers interested in nature and cultural monuments located on the banks of the old Gauja valley.

The reason why fortified settlements by Livs later followed by monolith stone castles erected by Germans were established here are the natural conditions and geologic processes over the last 10,000–15,000 years and consequences thereof — complicated terrain, steep ravines, and rock pillars on banks in the places of their interactions, onto which castles were erected. Were the primeval valley not formed by the glacier, the nature and cultural landscape of Sigulda would be completely different!

Gutman's Cave is the widest and highest cave in the Baltics. It is 19 meters deep, 12 meters wide and 10 meters high.

The cave was formed from the yellow-brown sandstone rock of the Gauja river bank; its formation is due to a millennium-long interaction between the river and an underground spring.

The cave is considered the oldest tourist attraction in Latvia because visitors, from even the earliest days, wanted to leave “decorations” such as names, initials, and the dates of their visits engraved on the walls of the cave. Inside the cave, you may even find coats-of-arms and names of various barons and estate owners. These were made-to-order for a fee by local craftsmen who would wait for wealthy visitors near the cave armed with tools, stepladders, and templates. Today, it is no longer permitted to write on the cave walls because it is a protected archeological and geological monument.

According to local folk legend, the spring flowing out of the cave are the tears of the wife of the Liv chief, Rindaugs. The story tells that the chief buried his unfaithful wife on the sandy bank of the Gauja river. The poor woman, distraught by her guilty conscience, cried so hard that her tears flowed out of the large cave. To this day, the spring’s waters are said to have healing properties. Yet another tale explains how the cave got its name. A long time ago there was a good man who lived in a cave and used the spring water to heal people. “Gut Mann” in German means good man.

Attachments: