For more than seven centuries, Rēzekne has been one of the political, economic and cultural-historical centers of Latgale, Latvia's eastern region. Many interesting events and personalities have been recorded in the history of the city during this time and now 100 of them have been selected and included in the publication, the launch of which will take place to coincide within the Rēzekne City Festival on July 31.
The authors of the publication, Anna Līpenīte, Head of the Cultural History Department of the Latgale Museum of Cultural History, and historian Kaspars Strods, intend it to be an informative guide that will not only reveal interesting historical events about the city, but also encourage people to visit places they might not have been before and learn about its history. Initially at least, it is available only in Latvian.
"The book contains selected historical facts, in chronological order as road signs in the seven-century history of Rēzekne. The publication is like a guide that gives the reader the most important information about the city's past,” said Līpenīte.
The historian Strods said that putting the publication together was a matter of whittling down an abundance of facts.
"Of course, in the beginning there were a lot of facts, they were sifted through several times. That's how we came to these 100 facts. The aim was to select the most important facts from Rēzekne as a settlement, from the earliest times to the present day," said.
Asked what seemed to be the most interesting fact for the historian himself, Strods said that it was a fact about the former Rēzekne prison, though he did not reveal exactly what the fact was.
In her turn, Līpenīte points out that her favorite was a fact related to the environment.
"My favorite is the fact that in the 1980s, Rēzekne was one of the greenest cities in Latvia. At that time, when the city covered an area of 17.43 square kilometers and lived 42,500 people, there were 44 square meters of greenery per capita," she said.
