The Art Nouveau district
A third of the centre built in Jugendstil between 1900 and 1914, with giant faces on the façades.
Duration
1 hr 30 min – 2 hrs 30 min
Best time
Mid-morning
Open
Every day
Entry price
Free
Riga went through a population boom at the turn of the twentieth century and built itself all at once, at the exact moment Art Nouveau dominated European architecture. The result: some eight hundred Jugendstil buildings, a third of the city centre, the highest concentration in the world.
Alberta street is the demonstration: Mikhail Eisenstein — the film-maker's father — signed eight blocks there covered in masks, sphinxes, screaming faces and allegorical figures, in a decorative style with no restraint whatsoever. You walk two hundred metres with your head up.
Getting there
Alberta and Elizabetes streets, north of the canal park. Twenty minutes on foot from the old town.
Rules on site
These are lived-in buildings: you look from the pavement, and the entrance halls are not open except the museum's. The façades face north and stay in shade in the afternoon.