Riga, Latvia: Art Nouveau Boulevards and a UNESCO Old Town

The Old Town (Vecriga), a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1997, is a compact medieval quarter of guild houses, merchant warehouses, and thirteenth-century church towers on a bend of the Daugava River. The most visited sites are the Blackheads' House — a fourteenth-century guild hall rebuilt after Soviet demolition in 2001, with an ornate stepped gable that is the most recognizable facade in the city — and St. Peter's Church, whose spire has been rebuilt three times since 1690. The climb to the observation platform of St. Peter's takes about five minutes by elevator and gives a panoramic view of the old city and the river.

The Alberta Street and Elizabetes Street corridor, ten minutes northwest of the old city by foot, is the heart of Riga's Art Nouveau district. Mikhail Eisenstein (father of the filmmaker Sergei) designed many of the most flamboyant buildings here — the facades decorated with stylized female masks, sphinxes, plant motifs, and allegories in ornate plasterwork. Walking the length of Alberta Street (about 400 meters) and the parallel blocks of Elizabetes and Strēlnieku takes thirty to forty minutes. The Riga Art Nouveau Museum at Alberta 12 occupies a restored early-twentieth-century apartment and gives context for the architectural period.

The Riga Central Market, in five former German military airship hangars near the train station, is one of the largest and most unusual markets in Europe. Each pavilion is dedicated to a different product category: meat, fish, vegetables, dairy, and dry goods. The smoked fish section — Baltic sprats, eel, and perch — is the most characteristically Latvian. The market opens daily and is busiest in the morning.

The Latvian National Museum of Art, a block from the Art Nouveau district, holds the most complete collection of Latvian painting from the eighteenth century through the mid-twentieth century. The collection is largely unknown outside Latvia; the Latvian national romanticism period at the turn of the twentieth century, with its particular relationship to the Baltic landscape, is the strongest section. Admission is modest.