Riga holds more Art Nouveau architecture than any other city in Europe, block after block of ornamented facades from a building boom in the early 1900s, alongside a compact medieval old town that traces back to its days as a powerful Hanseatic trading port. It remains one of the Baltics' best-value city breaks.
Art Nouveau Riga
Alberta iela and the surrounding streets in the Quiet Centre hold the densest concentration of Art Nouveau facades, many designed by Mikhail Eisenstein, sphinxes, screaming faces, and elaborate floral ornamentation cover buildings that are still, remarkably, ordinary residential apartments. The Art Nouveau Museum, in a preserved period apartment, shows what the interiors looked like at the style's peak.
Walk the streets slowly and look up, the ornamentation is almost entirely at cornice and upper-floor level, easy to miss if you're only looking at street level shopfronts.
Old Town and the Coast
Riga's old town, smaller and less crowded than Tallinn's, centres on the House of the Blackheads and St. Peter's Church, whose tower gives a view across the Daugava River and the old town's red rooftops. The Central Market, housed in former Zeppelin hangars, is one of Europe's largest and best for cheap, excellent food.
Jūrmala, a beach resort town twenty minutes by train, has a long stretch of Baltic coastline backed by wooden villas from the Soviet era used as sanatoriums, a curious and pleasant day trip if the weather is warm enough for the beach.
Recommended Stay · Riga · Old Town
Grand Poet Hotel
A restored historic building in Riga's old town named for the poet Rainis, with a rooftop terrace and a location steps from both the Art Nouveau district and the river.
