Aglona is a town of 800 people (2021) in Latgale. Aglona is home to the Aglona Basilica, an important religious centre of Latvian Catholics.
Understand
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[edit]Aglona sits at the intersection of the P60 and P62 highways, 40 km northeast of Daugavpils, and 234 km from Riga.
Get around
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Map of Aglona
See
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- 1 Basilica of the Assumption (Aglonas Bazilika), Aglona (40 km northeast of Daugavpils), ☏ +371 65381109, +371 29185998, [email protected]. Construction of the present church, which is in the Italian Baroque style, began in 1768 and was completed in 1780.
- 2 The Aglona Bread Museum (Maizes muzejs), Daugavpils iela 7, Aglona, ☏ +371 29287044, [email protected]. A private museum and the only bread museum in the Baltic States that introduces the cultivation of cereals and bread making. The museum's hostess welcomes visitors in Latgalian folk costume, addressing them in Latgalian, introducing them to the revered Latvian rye bread loaf. The museum introduces visitors to the cultivation of cereals, the recognition of rye grain, its tasting, as well as the procedure for making bread, its baking and eating, as well as traditions in Latgale. Next to the museum, in the same building, there is a bakery. You can watch the bread being baked through a glass wall, and you can buy freshly baked bread and pastries in the bakery's shop.
- 3 Magdalen Castle Mound (Madaļānu pilskalns), village of Madelāni. A hillfort in the central part of Aglona parish, on the western shore of Lake Lielā Dubuļka. The castle mound is 20 m high. The plateau and southern slope of the castle mound were cultivated for agriculture until the recent past, so the fortifications in this part of the castle mound are no longer visible. Two terraces remain on the northern slope. It is believed that the terraces once surrounded the entire castle mound.The first inhabitants lived in the settlement 3,000 years ago. From this time, hearths, wheelless ceramics, stone and bone tools, bone pins, pendants, amulets from animal teeth have been found. The hillfort flourished in the 12th-13th centuries, when Latgalian feudal lords and their subordinates lived here.
