Visit Riga

Why visit Riga

Riga is one of the most overlooked great European capitals — a UNESCO-listed Baltic port city of around 615,000 people whose centre holds the largest collection of Art Nouveau buildings anywhere in the world (about 800 of them, mostly in the Albert Street / Elizabetes iela quarter, with the riotous facades of architect Mikhail Eisenstein, father of the film director Sergei). The compact medieval Old Town between the Daugava river and the green ring of canalised moat is the other side of the same coin: a tight grid of merchant houses, guild halls, and red-brick churches lining cobbled lanes. House of the Blackheads (the famous 14th-century Brotherhood of unmarried German merchants, totally destroyed in 1941 and meticulously rebuilt in 1999) is the most photographed building in the country; St Peter's Church next door has a lift to the 72-metre tower for the best view of the city. Don't miss the brilliant Central Market, housed in five enormous former Zeppelin hangars (one of the largest indoor markets in Europe), the moving Museum of the Occupation of Latvia, and the dramatic National Library by Gunnar Birkerts on the opposite bank of the river. Riga punches well above its weight on food, design, and the country's strong choral tradition; the Song and Dance Festival every five years is one of UNESCO's intangible heritage events.