Ikšķile Municipality is a municipality in Vidzeme, Latvia. The municipality was formed in 2004 by reorganization of Ikšķile town with its countryside territory, the administrative centre being Ikšķile. Ikšķile is one of the oldest inhabited regions of Latvia. This is evidenced by the mound and an ancient burial ground in the present rural area of Ikšķile. By the 9th – 12th centuries there was already a Liv village on the Daugava waterway.
Building and employment of castles was an important topic in the first accounts available in the Livonian Chronicle of Henry. Henry of Livonia, an eyewitness of the events, started telling about a canon of the Augustinian monastery of Segeburg in Holstein called Meinhard. Meinhard heard stories of travelers about the great Daugava river, an area of commerce for pagan tribes of Livs and Letts.
Meinhard venture there to convert people to Christianity. After some conversions, he built a church in the village of Ikšķile and baptized some Livonians.
In 1185 Gotland’s stone-mounds built the castle of Ikšķile with a chapel or church. This is the oldest stone castle in Latvia and it is also the oldest stone building in Eastern Baltic.