Just outside the entrance, there’s an excellent recreated country tavern where you can sample traditional Latvian peasant food such as gray peas (which I highly recommend) and wash it down with beer brewed on the premises. Should you wish to bring your own food, there are picnic tables nearby. Other buildings nearby host various cultural events related to the museum’s exhibition, primarily music and dance performances, but also events geared specifically toward families. Many of the buildings inside double as traditional artisans’ studios, with pottery and other decorative items made on the premises for sale.

The best sights are inside, where buildings ranging from the seventeenth to early twentieth centuries are thoughtfully arranged, for the most part, in miniature villages according to both date and region. This makes for a sharp contrast with most other museums of this type, which tend to arrange buildings together based on type (for example, placing all windmills together), and gives the assemblage a more realistic feel. At the far edge, by Lake Jugla, making excellent use of the local landscape, there’s a recreated Liv fishing village. To sort this all out, it’s worth purchasing a map when you enter, though most of the buildings are accompanied by at least rudimentary descriptions in English.

Choosing a personal favorite from the museum’s dozens of buildings is difficult, but I found a small, wooden, eighteenth-century Russian Orthodox chapel, complete with an onion dome, to be the highlight of my visit. The variety of windmills on display is also quite interesting, as their shapes betray subtle architectural and mechanical improvements made over the centuries. However, it’s the overall setting, with the buildings placed within clearings in a pine wood that overlooks Lake Jugla, that’s the museum’s most appealing feature—it’s both a nice break from Riga and one of the city’s essential sights.