On St Peter’s Day, June 29, 1775, Jelgava ceremonially opened Duke Peter von Biron’s cherished Academia Petrina, the Jelgava Academic Gymnasium. The founding order had been signed three weeks earlier, but the opening was set for the duke’s name day. In the new building designed by Severin Jensen there were lecture rooms, a library, and even an astronomical observatory in the tower dome; 17 students began in the first semester. Dry statistics suddenly smell of chalk, candle smoke, and Enlightenment ambition.

Academia Petrina emerged in the late period of the Duchy of Courland and Semigallia, as Enlightenment ideas reached Jelgava. Jānis Stradiņš described it as the first higher school and the first scientific centre in what is now Latvia, although it never formally received university rights.