Taurupe Manor Granary Rises From 20 Years of Ruin and Wins Construction Award
A manor granary in Taurupe parish, Ogre municipality, stood in ruins for over two decades before reopening to visitors in July 2025 and winning the Grand Prix of the Latvian Construction Year Award. Long-time parish administrator Jānis Stafeckis discussed the restoration and the local school.
A historic manor granary in Taurupe parish, Ogre municipality, Latvia, has been restored after more than twenty years in ruins. The building opened to visitors in July 2025 and the same year received the Grand Prix of the Latvian Construction Year Award. Jānis Stafeckis, the long-serving head of the Taurupe parish administration, spoke about its revival on “Kaimiņš no novada”, a programme by the news portal BNN.
The granary stands in the centre of Taurupe, among the historic manor buildings. It was previously damaged by fire and waited more than two decades for restoration. Work began eight years before the opening. Stafeckis has worked in the parish administration for 32 years and witnessed both the building's decline and its revival. He admits the project was completed with great difficulty and that at times it seemed it might never be finished. The programme also touches on the role of Egils Helmanis, then chairman of the Ogre municipality council, in the restoration.
The exhibition
The ground floor holds a permanent exhibition, free of charge, in which local people's life stories are interwoven with events in Latvian history. One exhibit is an old dowry chest. Its story began in 1915, during the First World War, when the Līcis family fled as refugees and took the chest to the Latvian colony “Taurupe” near the Sea of Azov, founded by emigrants from Taurupe in the second half of the 19th century. After independent Latvia was established, the family returned to their home with the chest.
Another part of the exhibition, “The Found Purvītis”, is devoted to Latvian landscape painter Vilhelms Purvītis. In 1945 a large share of the artist's works was sent to Germany and vanished en route. One version holds that the train was bombed and the paintings burned, but this has not been firmly proven. Temporary exhibitions are held regularly on the upper floor.
The school
The conversation also covered the Taurupe school. When Stafeckis began leading the parish in 1994, the secondary school had about 280 pupils; now it has 26. He says its survival depends on the municipality's political leadership, which, in his view, understands that a school is the soul of a parish. The programme also compares costs, noting that the state spends more on keeping one prisoner than on educating one pupil.
