St. Peter’s Evangelical Lutheran Church in Usma

Usma Evangelical Lutheran Church is a typical example of 17th- and 18th-century sacred wooden architecture of the Duchy of Courland, which today is located at the Latvian Ethnographic Open-Air Museum in Riga.

It was originally built in 1704 from hewn logs and stood on the shore of Lake Usma until 1935, when it was dismantled and transferred to the Open-Air Museum as a valuable cultural monument.

In 1936, following a design by architect and ethnographer P. Kundziņš and P. Ārends, a new Usma church was built on the old foundations. Due to Soviet ideology, parish life declined during the 1960s. After Latvia regained independence, the first service was held at the initiative of local residents, and shortly afterwards, a parish was established and the church was restored.

St. Peter’s Evangelical Lutheran Church in Usma combines traditional wooden construction techniques with the silhouette of the old church. To this day, it has become a protected site and is considered a gem of 1930s Latvian architecture and Courland wooden construction.