ZZZ
RIGA
City life
With a medieval old town, art nouveau touches and vestiges of a Soviet past,
the Latvian capital is a patchwork of a city that bears marks of its former
occupiers. But a more modern Riga, of cocktail bars and high-rise hotels, is
weaved in too. WORDS: David Whitley PHOTOGRAPHS: Simon Bajada
R
iga has the look of somewhere that
really, really wants people to visit it
on a city break. It knows it’ll never
have the art collections, international icons
and global player dynamism of Paris, New
York and Madrid. But there’s no question it’s
prepared to hustle its way into the second
tier. The old town, in particular, looks
almost suspiciously adorable: it’s clear that
serious money and determination has been
thrown into every paint-lick and building
restoration. Chunky red-brick churches and
guild houses with satisfyingly decorative
lourishes line a free-for-all of medieval
streets that city planners long gave up on
organising coherently.
These lanes lead pedestrians out into a
series of squares, which, on an admittedly
rare sunny day, are absolute catnip for idlers
who enjoy sitting on a cafe terrace people-
watching. Come the long summer evenings,
cofees are switched for beers, and there’s a
perceptible glow of agreeable pleasantness.
It should be noted that this feels a far cry
from what Riga was like when cheap lights
and European Union membership irst put
it on the city break radar. Back in the mid-
2000s, it was a lads-on-tour mayhem magnet,
with stag parties lured in by what was then
cheap beer and a blind eye turned to the
sort of things brides would disapprove of.But nowadays, it feels far more cruise ship
than booze cruise, and there have been clear
eforts to promote aspects — art nouveau
architecture, the markets, history and
Latvian food — that would have been lost in
the swilling haze 15 years ago.
Riga is also notable for being a capital
city that stands apart from the rest of the
country. The city feels like it holds the rest
of Latvia at arm’s length, mystiied as to why
everyone’s so obsessed with hanging out in
forests and gathering mushrooms.
This is at least partly because Riga was,
historically, a separate entity — a Hanseatic
trading port, run by a sizeable German
merchant contingent, which preferred
soaring brick guild houses to dainty, wooden
rural shacks.
Over time it’s found itself bundled into an
ever-rotating roster of larger political entities
— German, Russian, Swedish, Polish-
Lithuanian, Nazi and Soviet empires have all
swallowed up Riga, sometimes tying it to the
surrounding areas, sometimes treating it as a
standalone port city.
This cavalcade of inluences adds up,
bringing edges and personality traits that
hold the attention long ater the joy of
mooching around the old town starts to wear
thin. Riga may be eager to please, but there’s
plenty behind the make-up.140 nationalgeographic.co.uk/travel