stepbrothers who took care about the economic life. The Komtur also lead the Komturei of Kuldiga which had also Durbe, Sabile, Skrunda, Aizpute, Alsunga and Saldus along with Kuldiga in possession.
After establishing the Dukedom of Kurzeme and Zemgale in 1561, a new period began in the history of Kuldiga. The first duke Gothard Kettler chose the former order castle to be one of his residences. He and also later other dukes approved the former town rights of Kuldiga by supporting its economic development. When the duke Gothard died, the dukedom was divided into two parts and till the year of 1618 Kuldiga was the residence of his youngest son Vilhelm and a capital of Kurzeme. The town made profit from trading with Riga and Jelgava because of the taxes on all the goods taken across the bridge. In 1615, the bridge was destroyed by floods causing a great loss to the town. In the same year, there was a huge fire destroying the major part of the wood construction in the town. After reconstruction of the town, a new market place was established (the Square of the City Council nowadays) and a new Town Hall was built (bazn?cas iela 5 nowadays) which we now name as the old one. So the centre of the town was moved from the old place near by the St. Catherine�s Church to the present Square of the City Council. The richest citizens and merchants built their houses around the new centre of the town. In the second part of the 19 century, small industrial companies began to be developed in the town. Some of them became to be factories with more than 100 workers. The largest factory in Kuldiga was the factory �Vulk?ns� producing matches (established in 1878 and closed in 2004), and the label of matchboxes had an image of a deer on it. The second largest was the factory of Vintelers T?ki. Besides, such things as needles, cigars, soap, vodka, liqueurs and mineral water were produced in Kuldiga. Beer brewing was the tradition with deep routes � beer was brewed in the order
