(click to enlarge) This is a small but charming museum in a refurbished old house in Riga. The guide was knowledgeable and happy to pose in her period costume in front of the grand staircase.
(click to enlarge) The wall decorations were graceful and elegant.
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The broad facades of the Art Nouveau buildings in Riga are impressive, but the real fun comes when you look at the details.
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The "Historic Center" of Riga is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, because it boasts the largest collection of Art Nouveau buildings in Europe. According to
http://www.worldheritagesite.org/sites/riga.html
"Between 1896 and 1913, the city expanded and a housing boom followed. The style which developed in Riga was influenced mainly by German, Austrian and Finnish architects. Mikhail Eisenstein is one of the most famous proponents of the style in Riga.
After the revolution of 1905 a distinctively Latvian variation of Art Nouveau developed, known as National Romanticism. Architects started to use traditional Latvian folk elements and natural building materials. Typical elements were steep roofs, heavy structures and the use of ethnographic ornamental motifs. "
(click to enlarge) Building facades in Riga are often striking. Some are very old...
(click to enlarge) ... while others are turn-of-the-century Art Nouveau.
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Many of the streets in the Old Town of Riga (and the other Baltic capitols) are narrow, winding, and paved with cobblestones. It makes for nice historic atmosphere - and nice photos with S-curves.
(click to enlarge) Painter editing out the foreground
(click to enlarge) Chess here (and pretty much everywhere) looks like an old-timers' game.
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The Central Market in Riga has a fish section that features dried (and perhaps salted) fish. This is a common dish in the Baltics and around the North Sea, but I've not seen it displayed like this before in a market.
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Shopkeeper and shopper
(click to enlarge) Riga has a large and lively central market. Looming in the background is the Soviet-era Academy of Sciences building in familiar Stalinist skyscraper style. According to the Wikipedia article on "Latvian Academy of Sciences",
"The Academy of Sciences edifice was built after World War II, between 1953 and 1956, as a gift from the workers and peasants of the other Soviet republics to the Latvian people and also to mark the borders of Stalin's empire, and is appropriately decorated with several hammers and sickles as well as Latvian folk ornaments . Most Latvians consider themselves lucky that the giant portrait of Stalin that was supposed to be a part of the facade never came to fruition. Being 108 metres (353 ft) tall, it was the first skyscraper in the republic and was the tallest building until the construction of the Hansabanka Central Office (121m or 396ft), and at the time, one of the highest reinforced concrete buildings in the world.
The building, designed by Lev Rudnev, is a cousin to similar Stalin-era skyscrapers, which were representative of what became known as Stalinist architecture (sometimes referred to as Stalin's Empire style or Socialist Classicism). The architecture of the skyscraper resembles many others built in the Soviet Union at the time, most notably the main building of Moscow State University. Local nicknames for this building include Stalin's birthday cake and the Kremlin."
(click to enlarge) The Statue of Liberty Freedom Monument. According to a web site about the monument,
http://www.endex.com/gf/buildings/liberty/worldstatues/SOLRiga/solriga.htm ,
"This monument is located in downtown Riga, Latvia, Brìvìbas street, dedicated "To Fatherland and Freedom".
The Monument was executed by Kârlis Zâle (1888-1942), a well-known Latvian sculptor. Ernests Shtalbergs was the architect . The 42 meter high monument is topped by a Liberty Statue - a woman with three stars symbolizing regional parts of Latvia: Kurzeme, Vidzeme and Latgale. At the base of the monument are several sculptural groups symbolizing different values - Labor, Strength of the Nation, Spiritual Strength, Freedom, Family; relief on the lowest block represents historical events.
The Freedom Monument was unveiled in 1935 during Latvia's brief period of independence between the wars. Known locally as Milda, it was a powerful symbol of anti-Soviet resistance serving as the focus of gatherings in the late 1980's during early stages of the drive for independence. It is puzzling why the Soviets did not tear it down, but certainly the natives' predictable wrath was a deterent. Now it is a shrine to national independence.
People still bring flowers to the monument which are tended to by the city's elderly women. During the Soviet era, a running joke, not completely untrue, was that the monument was a travel agency, because anyone who dared place flowers at its base got a free, one-way ticket to faraway Siberia. "
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The narrow streets and alleys of old-town Riga, coupled with some bright paint, make for some pretty abstractions.
(click to enlarge) The Shroud Bridge, one of five crossing the Daugava River, was built during the Soviet period. We saw bridges of similar design in Vietnam.
(click to enlarge) The railing of the walkway along the Daugava casts striking shadows.
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As in most large cities, Riga has some street musicians trying to make a buck (or a Lat, in this case). But it's rare one encounters tuba players.
Riga is best known for its Art Nouveau architecture, of which we'll see examples in a few days. However, the Old Town has a fair number of impressive Baroque buildings, including this cathedral...
(click to enlarge) ... and the spectacular House of the Blackheads (the building on the right). According to Wikipedia,
"House of the Blackheads ... is a building situated in the old town of Riga, Latvia. The original building was erected during the first third of the 14th century for the Brotherhood of the Blackheads Guild, a guild for unmarried German merchants in Riga. [Their patron saint was Mauricius, a black man, hence the name.] Major works were done in the years 1580 and 1886, adding most of the ornamentations.
The structure was bombed to a ruin by the Germans June 28, 1941 and the remains demolished by the Soviets in 1948. The current reconstruction was erected from 1995 to 1999."
After Estonia we went to Latvia, spending most of our time in the capital, Riga.
(click to enlarge) Part of an exhibit of sculpted heads, arrayed on loading docks along a street in Riga
(click to enlarge) Is this what we look like when WE'RE taking pictures?
(click to enlarge) The flags of real people: jeans hanging out to dry in an old (but not historic) part of Tallinn
(click to enlarge) Flags of many countries, flying in Tallinn's Old Town.