Dagda, Latvia

Dagda is a town in Krāslava Municipality in the Latgale region of Latvia, near the country's border with Belarus. It began as an ancestral estate founded in the 17th century by Johann Franz von Gilsen, Chancellor of the Duchy of Courland and Semigallia, who established the first Catholic community there and built a wooden church. The estate later passed to the Bujnicki family, among whom the writer and publicist Kazimierz Bujnicki helped initiate the abolition of serfdom in Latgale. In the early 19th century it held a unique library, an archive and a collection of artworks and archaeological finds, all destroyed when the estate was burned during the Polish January Uprising of 1863 to 1864; only the park with its dug canals survived. The 1897 census recorded 1,516 people, of whom 1,026 were of Jewish faith and 377 Roman Catholics. Dagda has a humid continental climate, and in March 1972 the deepest ground frost in Latvia, 150 centimetres, was registered there.