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General information

Valga is a town that cannot fit within the boundaries of one state. The historical city of Valga was halved by Konnaoja ("frog creek") on 1 July 1920, leaving a part of the city (later named Valka) to the Latvian state. The river Pedel flowing through the town was already a border mark between the Sakala and Ugandi counties in medieval times.

Valga is first mentioned as a meeting point of tradesmen in the Riga Credit Book of 1286, but it got its city rights only in 1584 from the Polish king Stefan Bathory. To commemorate this, a monument to Stefan Bathory was opened opposite St John's church in the centre of the town in 2003. 

Valga was situated in the middle of Old Livonia, by the big war and trade route connecting Riga with Tartu, Tartu with Tallinn and Narva, through waterways, with Pskov. A more direct route to Pskov was through Vastseliina. As shown below, railways played an important role in the rise and development of the town.

Valga can be considered as one of Estonian open garden towns, as it has no castle or protective construction with towers and walls like other medieval Estonian towns. It is likely that Valga would have become the most important small town of Livonia, if it had had the important prerequisite for the rapid development of medieval towns - a protective construction against outside enemies. The history of the buildings of Valga is even shorter. The town has been destroyed and burned down in several wars, the last destruction taking place during the Great Northern War of 1708. The fact that Valga remained standing despite recurrent fires can be explained by its location.

Despite various re-births of the town itself after destructive fires, the population growth of Valga has been relatively slow - approximately eighty inhabitants per year. The largest leap in the development of the town of Valga was brought about by its rise to the crossing point of railways in 1889 and the subsequent creation of railway jobs in 1890. After the development of the railway, the population grew abruptly.

Today, there are 15,070 inhabitants in Valga, 39% of whom are not ethnic Estonian. Regardless of the relatively large ethnic mix, the town is a peaceful and friendly place to live and work.

It can be claimed that the fate of Valga has always been connected to roads. Founded in the Middle Ages next to a large war and trade route, Valga was repeatedly damaged in wars that crossed the region. However, the same war and trade route was the reason for Valga's persistent re-birth, bringing trade, and the Pedel river valley offering a convenient place to stop on the way from Riga to Tartu. According to the national plan ‘Estonia 2010', one of the major international transport routes to be developed is the Valga-Tartu-Jõhvi-Narva route. On the national and regional levels, this road is seen as a connecting and balancing addition, in terms of regional development interests, to the three major Estonian transport routes - Tallinn-Pärnu, Tallinn-Tartu and Tallinn-Narva. Via Hanseatica is the official title for the cross-European so-called Cretian tunnel no. 1A, which belongs in the cross-European transport network. Via Hanseatica is situated on the route Lübeck - Gdansk - Königsberg - Riga - Valga - Tartu - Narva - St.Petersburg. The development of common transport infrastructure and traffic is foreseen on this route.