At Riga’s Forest Cemetery – not in a palace or parliament – the grave monument to Latvia’s first State President, Jānis Čakste, was unveiled on 14 September 1935. The nine-metre stele with Čakste’s portrait relief, a mourning woman and an ancient Latvian warrior was the work of sculptor Kārlis Jansons and architect Alfrēds Birkhāns; the ceremony was attended by State President Alberts Kviesis and Prime Minister Kārlis Ulmanis, and Archbishop Teodors Grīnbergs consecrated the monument. Stones for part of the ensemble came from a dismantled section of Daugavgrīva Fortress.

The monument was built by the Jānis Čakste Foundation, created after the president’s death, and its cost reached 100,000 lats. Jansons worked on it for almost three years; during the Soviet occupation the site was fenced off, yet people continued to bring candles there as a quiet gesture of resistance.