Kandava (pop. 4000) is a small town in Eastern Courland, famous for surviving the wars almost intact.

It offers a glimpse of how a pre-WW1 Latvian town looked like. The main market square is surrounded by old buildings: residential, commercial and an old fire fighter depot. A couple of nearby streets are equally old.

Three religions have their houses of worship in Kandava: Lutheran hilltop church, Roman Catholic and Jewish (the Catholic church is however new while the synagogue is closed).

As it was common in the 19th century, the town has a ruined Livonian Order Castle on top of one of its hills. It has been neither completely dismantled for building material, nor rebuilt as happened elsewhere. A model located at the foothill helps re-imagining how the castle looked like when intact.

Another draw to Kandava is its 1873 stone bridge, the oldest in Latvia.