Riga holds one of the largest concentrations of Art Nouveau architecture anywhere in Europe, and unlike most such claims this one is easy to verify on foot. A substantial part of the city was built during a short and prosperous window either side of 1900, when the style was at its height and money was available to indulge it. The result is whole streets built to a single fashion, rather than the occasional showpiece building surrounded by something else.
Where to go
The densest stretch lies north of the canal, a fifteen-minute walk from the Old Town. Alberta iela is the street everyone photographs and it earns the attention: a continuous run of facades loaded with sculpted faces, masks, peacocks, sphinxes and stylised foliage, several of them designed by the same architect within a few years of each other. Elizabetes iela nearby carries several more of the best-known buildings, and the surrounding grid rewards wandering because the ordinary residential blocks are often quietly extraordinary.
What to look for
The style in Riga divides roughly into an early decorative phase, heavy with sculptural ornament, and a later more restrained national romantic phase that uses natural materials, steeper roof forms and folk-derived motifs. Once you can tell them apart the streets read very differently. Doorways are the best place to start looking, since they usually carry the most concentrated detail and are at eye level.
- Facades above the first floor. The most elaborate work is deliberately placed where it reads from across the street.
- Stairwells. Where a building is open to visitors, the interior stairwell is often the finest surviving part.
- Ironwork. Balconies, railings and door furniture were designed as part of the whole and frequently survive intact.
- Corner buildings. Architects treated corners as the opportunity for towers, domes and the most extravagant sculpture.
Making sense of it
There is a museum dedicated to the period in an apartment on Alberta iela, furnished as it would have been when the building was new. An hour there before walking the streets makes the walk considerably more interesting, because it explains what the interiors behind those facades were actually like and who lived in them.
Practicalities
The district is residential and most buildings are private homes, so the etiquette is to look from the street rather than push into courtyards. Morning light suits the eastern side of the street and late afternoon the western, which matters more than usual here because so much of the detail is shallow relief that flattens out in overhead sun.
Allow ninety minutes for the core streets and longer if you intend to visit the museum. It is the part of Riga that most surprises first-time visitors, and it is a short walk from a quarter they came for entirely different reasons.
Leave a Reply