In the middle of Riga’s wartime summer, on July 29, 1941, Imants Lancmanis was born—the future art historian, painter and restorer of Rundāle Palace. His route to the palace began not with a courtly dream but with a near-accidental interest in a mill tower in the Bauska district: in 1964, still an Art Academy student, he arrived in Rundāle and saw the neglected palace. Later Lancmanis put it plainly: “I devote my life to this building; I do not let it collapse.”

During the Soviet period, Rundāle Palace was badly neglected, and Lancmanis’s generation of restorers had to research, rescue and explain the 18th-century heritage of Courland all at once. His work at Rundāle left Latvian museums with a very concrete standard: restoration begins with sources and patience.