Latvia Guide
Rīga
With just over 725,000 inhabitants, almost one third of the country's population, RĪGA is the biggest city in the Baltics, offering a degree of bustle, sophistication and urban chaos that neither Tallinn nor Vilnius can compete with. It's also one of the best-looking Baltic cities, its rich history as a military, ecclesiastical and, above all, mercantile powerhouse having bequeathed the city a legacy of fine architecture: medieval red-brick churches and gabled merchants' houses rise above the alleyways of the Old Town, while the surrounding nineteenth-century streets hold some remarkable examples of Art Nouveau and National Romantic (drawing on Latvian folk symbols for ornamental inspiration) style.
Almost totally absent from the capital are the national characteristics that many Latvians ascribe to themselves – an enduring attachment to wholesome peasant values and a love of nature, for example. Since its very inception, Rīga has dedicated itself to commerce and wheeler-dealing. Hard-headed mercantile instincts have always served to bond Rīga's ethnically diverse population: currently, half of the city's inhabitants are Latvian, while the other half are either Russian or Russian-speaking, giving the city a strangely schizophrenic character.
The majority of Rīga's historical buildings are concentrated in the Old Town (Vecrīga), a compact web of narrow, cobbled streets, medieval merchant houses and brick-built churches squatting on the eastern bank of the broad River Daugava. To the east, the spacious park belt, with its sedate nineteenth-century buildings sheltering beneath beech, elm and lime trees, couldn't be more different. Beyond here, streets radiate outwards through the so-called Centre (Centrs) – a name that never fails to confuse first-time visitors, who, not unreasonably, assume that Rīga's centre is somewhere in the Old Town. Although it's a largely residential area, the reason it's called "the Centre" is because it also contains the city's most important shopping and commercial district – concentrated in the region enclosed by Valdemāra iela to the northwest and Čaka iela to the southeast. It's a gritty, grey area redeemed by the innumerable gems of Art Nouveau architecture lining its streets.
Rīga can easily fill two or three days of your holiday time – longer if you're drawn towards the more offbeat attractions of the city's suburbs, such as the impressive Open-air Ethnographic Museum. Also within easy reach are the Holocaust memorial sites at Rumbula and Salaspils, just outside the city to the southeast. You could even use the city as a base for exploring sizeable chunks of north and central Latvia, much of it no more than a couple of hours' journey away.
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