Nicgale Great Stone is the largest boulder in Latvia and a well-known natural monument. The boulder is 10,5m long, 10,4m wide and 3,5m high with a perimeter of 31,1m. It has volume of 170m3 above ground. During the 18-19th centuries, local landlords used to put a table and chairs atop the Great Stone to entertain their guests. This communal tradition continues to the present day when hunters sometimes meet on top of the stone, revellers dance to celebrate the Midsummer festival and tourist pose to have their pictures taken and eat their picnics. To make it easier to get up, a local forester was orderd to carve steps into the stone in 1938.
Legend tells that the devil had decided to dam the River Daugava. He filled a sieve with stones for this purpose somewhere in the north but as he got close to the Daugava he noticed that most of the stones had fallen out of the sieve, leaving just one big stone behind. In his anger he tossed this stone away as well, and it landed here in the Nicgale marsh, not far from the Daugava.
