During the Livonian Crusades, Kuldīga Castle was a military base in the battles of the Order with the undefeated Courland [lv], Zemgale and Samogitia.

After the establishment of the Duchy of Courland and Semigallia, Kuldīga Castle became one of the residences of the Kettler Dynasty [de] after 1575.

On October 28, 1610, in Kuldīga Castle, he had a son Jacob, but the mother Duchess Sophie of Prussia died soon after giving birth.

Duke Wilhelm held a luxurious funeral for his wife and buried the deceased on December 26 in the basement of Kuldīga Castle.

All the property, archives, church equipment, horses and grain stores kept in the duke's and nobles' palace were hijacked.

The duke's allies - the Poles and the Brandenburgers - were not much different from the enemies, as Kuldīga and the castle looted the last one left after the Swedish robbery.

The Duchess also moved in Princess Louise Charlotte of Brandenburg, who was solemnly greeted in the Anna field near Kuldīga by pathetically armed housewives, which testified to the city's scarcity.

Jacob's son Frederick Casimir Kettler, who became the duke after his father's death 1681, also stayed at Kuldīga Castle every year.

On 12 July, 1691, Kuldīga received the Duke Frederick Casimir Kettler and his new wife, Brandenburg, Princess Elizabeth Sofia.

Before that, wallpapers were procured for the as yet unpainted castle premises, which the townspeople brought back from Turlava [lv] in 5 large carts.

He stayed here the longest in the winter of 1693, when the construction of the zoo was completed, and in the summer of 1695, when the castle underwent major repairs.

At the beginning of 1701 approaching the danger of Great Northern War the regent of Kurzeme and the later duke Ferdinand Kettler ordered all the luxuries, furniture and wallpaper from Kuldīga castle to be moved to Mēmele (now Klaipėda), this was done so in June of the same year in 18 large carts accompanied by three ducal guards.

Everything that had not yet been taken away was looted by the Swedes, and so thoroughly that King Charles XII, who stayed in Kuldīga in 1702 from 17 to 27 january could not settle in the castle, but moved into the later mayor Stafenhagen house [lv] on Baznīcas Street.

In 1711 the Duchy 's government ordered the surviving objects to be placed in a locked room on the third floor opposite the duke's apartments.

Although the damage of the war was not great, the castles which were not needed by the duke living abroad or the nobles of Kurzeme, were not repaired.

On 15 August 1713, Duke Ferdinand Kettler ordered them to be offered to the housekeepers of Kuldīga for rent, but due to the poor condition of the mill, no one wanted it.

In a locked and sealed room on the second floor stored things from the dilapidated castle church and the duke's rooms: many wood carvings, including the duke's coat of arms, doors, painting pedestals and decorative columns, 16 paintings, robes, chairs and tables, carved bed parts, trays, trays frames, torn gilded leather wallpaper and various stuff.

To the right of the castle gate opening, a door led to the basement, to the left - to the prison (the present surviving vaulted room on the ground floor).

The vaulted rooms on the first or ground floor had a food barn, a storage and wine cellar, as well as a drink manager's apartment.

A parade staircase led from the castle courtyard to the duke's living quarters on the second or main floor on the Venta side.

The doors of the high living rooms and the common bedroom of the dignitaries were decorated with wood carvings, the rooms were luxuriously furnished: white glazed tiled stoves, chairs draped with leather and velvet, a mirror, an octagonal stone table.

As the territory belonging to the castle was too small for him, the Duke until 1693. bought land from Kuldīga landlords for 2400 dallers.

After the Great Northern War in 1710 there were only about 20 deer left in the zoo, which was supervised by the Duke's official - a garden supervisor who lived in a house at the end of the property.