Sēlpils or
Sēļpils or
Selpils (, "the castle of the
Selonians,"
German:
Selburg) was the military and political center of ancient
Selonia, a
Baltic land that lay in what is now northern
Lithuania and in southern
Latvia east of the
Semigallian lands and mostly on the left bank of the
Daugava river.
Archaeological evidence shows that Sēlpils, 17 km northwest of modern
Jēkabpils, was a major settlement between the
10th and
13th centuries. Used as a base for raids by the Selonians and their
Lithuanian allies into
Latgalian and
Livonian lands, Sēlpils was first mentioned in the
Chronicle of Henry of Livonia, which describes its capture by the
Livonian Order and their
Christianized ethnic Livonian allies in 1208. Sēlpils was briefly the seat of a Selonian
diocese (1218-1226), and then came under the rule of the Livonian Order, which constructed fortifications there for the Advocate () of the Order. These were destroyed by the
Swedes in 1704, during the
Great Northern War, and only traces of the foundations are visible at the site today.