LNA

The National Archives of Latvia (hereafter – NAL) is a direct administrative institution, subordinate to the Minister of Culture, which implements the national policy in the sphere of document and archive management.  The Archive accumulates, preserves and makes the Latvian national documentary heritage available to the public.

NAL unifies what previously were the institutions of the national archive system, so the national archives today are a part of The National Archives of Latvia. The Archives store documents starting from the 13th century to our days.

The most valuable collections are the documents once belonging to the knighthoods of Vidzeme and Courland, the Duchy of Courland, the Governor-General of Baltic provinces, the office documents of the Courland Governorate, the oldest documents of the city of Riga, as well as manors, churches, parishes and the archives of individual personas. A significant part of the Archives are built up by the holdings of the highest authority and local government institution of the Republic of Latvia (1918 – 1940 and 1991 – today). The Archives also hold the documents from the time of the period of German occupation (1941 – 1945) and USSR occupation (1941 -1991), as well as the contributions of foreign persons and the archives of Latvian exile organizations. The Archives amass audiovisual, photo and audio documents that were created from the second half of the 19th century to current date and also modern electronic documents.

Information about the National Archives of Latvia and its current events are available in the homepage www.arhivi.gov.lv