Old Town and Central Riga

Sunday, September 30

We found a short cut to the bridge and crossed the river to the Old Town for a morning walking tour of Riga’s old city.  A group of travelers from around the world gathered at St. Peter’s Church, whose spire can be seen all over town.  Edward, our young guide, provided a capsule summary of Latvian history, which closely parallels that of its neighbor to the north, Estonia, beginning with a 13^th – century Crusade led by German knights and the Church to Christianize the pagan Baltic lands. Subsequent occupations by Sweden, Poland, Russia, Germany and Russia (again), broken up with a brief period of independence in the early 20^th century have preceded the independent nations of today.  This history has produced nations whose current political incarnations are young, but whose human history is ancient. 

A good bit of medieval Riga was bombed during the World War II, so much has been either rebuilt or restored.  The ornately decorated Blackheads Hall, built in 1344 was totally levelled by both the Germans and later the Soviets; luckily, the blueprints survived and the current rebuild, begun in 1999, is evidently a faithful reproduction. 

As we wandered the narrow, VERY unevenly cobblestoned streets of the Old Town, Edward stopped to explain the significance of Riga’s Three Brothers.  Side by side, the group of three buildings is representative of a progression of household and commercial architecture.  From the 15^th century warehouse-above-the living quarters to the late 17^th century residential townhome, they also reflect the increasing importance of the trading economy in Riga. 

In the Dome Square, we saw not only the largest medieval church in the Baltics, but the large, rather barren surrounding square.  During Latvia’s interwar independence, the last Prime Minister harbored ambitions of dictatorial grandeur and felt that he needed a suitably large public space where he could address the gathered masses.  Accordingly, he had the residential buildings surrounding the cathedral razed, enabling him to exercise his inner Mussolini and Hitler.  And those were the good old days…

Our tour ended in front of the only remaining synagogue in Riga. Prior to the war, the city’s Jewish population numbered 85,000; 200 survived. The synagogue was spared because burning it would have endangered many other buildings in the tightly-packed Old Town. We visited the synagogue on our own to see its lovely, pale blue interior, lit by a large stained-glass skylight and decorated in the Art Nouveau style.

The Old Town is separated from the city center by a small canal bordered by lovely green parkland.  We had lunch along the canal and then walked to Central Riga to see a concentration of the city’s extensive number of Art Nouveau buildings in the neighborhood of Alberta iela (Street).  It was hard to keep our eyes on where we were walking, as we tied to take in every detail of the intricately decorated facades.

When we entered the Russian Orthodox Cathedral of the Nativity of Christ, we were struck by more than the soaring domes and candle-lit icons; there were baptisms in process and the sounds of the priest’s murmured prayers were no match for the howls of the wailing infants.

The nearby Freedom Monument towers over the canal and parkland in the middle of a wide boulevard.  The monument’s granite base displays large friezes of Latvian freedom fighters in battle and in song.  The green copper Lady Liberty high atop the monument holds aloft three gold stars representing Latvia’s three original cultural regions.  Erected in 1935, the monument survived the Soviet era, though during those decades it was off limits and anyone caught placing flowers or other tributes at the base were persecuted.

After a stop for coffee on this chilly and windy afternoon, we went to the nearby Museum of the Occupation of Latvia in its temporary digs along the Esplanade.  The exhibits cover the years of Soviet, Nazi and Soviet 2.0 occupations of Latvia when the horrors that were visited upon the Latvians was matched by their patriotism, resistance and perseverance.  Decades of oppression, deportation, relocation, forced labor, family separation, Germanification, Russification, and mass murder failed to quench their national spirit and resolve.  Resistance took many forms, armed and unarmed, overt and underground.   

Among the most powerful events in the freedom movement was the Baltic Way, or Baltic Chain.  In 1989, on the 50^th anniversary of the German-Soviet treaty giving control of the Baltics to the Soviets, two million Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians (about half of the native citizens of the three countries!!) joined hands in a human chain that stretched 420 miles from Tallinn, through Riga, to Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania.  The event drew world attention to the three nations’ solidarity, quest for freedom, and to the moral injustice of Soviet subjugation.  The Baltic movement coincided with other events and currents destabilizing the Soviet world order and within two years, all three Baltic countries had secured their independence.  

En route back to our apartment, as we walked past a simple monument – the impression of two bare footprints in stone on a spot where the Baltic Chain had passed – we considered the powers of oppression and resistance.  We couldn’t help but wonder how we would have fared had our own time and circumstance been different.  There’s much to learn in these small countries.