Riga: Museums and Monuments

If you only have time to visit one museum in Riga, make it the Latvian Open-Air Ethnographic Museum. Located amid a pine forest on the banks of Lake Jugla, it boasts a collection of more than a hundred traditional buildings from all corners of the country, some almost four hundred years old.

Split into geographical sections representing each of Latvia’s four historical regions plus the area around the capital, you’ll need two hours at the very least to explore the site in any kind of detail. The timber buildings include a fishing village from the Baltic Sea coast, pottery sheds, windmills, bathhouses, beekeeping huts and churches.
There are more than three thousand period objects on display, providing a panorama of traditional Latvian life from the seventeen century onwards.

You can buy a map at the entrance or follow the signboards between each settlement, linked by woodland paths and riverside walks. By the entrance, a long wooden building houses a souvenir shop and restaurant selling Latvian staples like grey peas with bacon and rye bread. Alternatively, you’ll find picnic tables and benches located throughout the grounds.

Among the museum’s must-see exhibits are a German-built grain warehouse from Liepaja, constructed in 1697 and moved plank-by-plank to the museum in 1940, and an early-16th century Catholic church from the southern region of Latgale made entirely of logs hewn together at the sides.

It’s well worth visiting the museum at different times of the year, particularly as the buildings are not always open to the public. On national holidays, the summer and winter solstice and religious festivals costumed guides re-enact traditional folk events like Shrovetide Carnivals, log-pulling and Easter fairs. It’s as close as you’re ever likely to get to the vanished world of pre-Communist Latvia.

The museum is open daily from 10-5pm and is easily reached by public transport. Take bus number 1 from either Merkela or Terbates ielas in the direction of Pansionats and get off at Brivdabas muzejs, the first stop after the pass the lake on your right. The entrance is a two-minute signposted walk from the bus stop.

Housed in a low-lying, black and grey structure between the Latvian Riflemen Statue and Ratslaukums, the Museum of the Occupation of Latvia is a must-see for every visitor to the city, detailing the fifty and a bit years in which Latvians suffered under Soviet and Nazi occupation.

Text heavy and less than a hundred metres long, the museum gives an exhaustive history of life under communist and fascist rule through a mixture of donated personal artefacts, photographs, propaganda posters and official documents. Everything is translated into English, Russian and German and there are foreign language speakers on duty at the front entrance if you need any further background information.

The most moving exhibits are the keepsakes from Latvians deported to the Soviet gulags - often for no other crime than simply being Latvian. There are hand-drawn pictures and violins, intricately carved chess sets and battered suitcases full of patched up clothing, totally ill-suited to the harsh Siberian weather. By the entrance is a reconstructed gulag hut straight out of One Day In The Life of Ivan Denisovich, with a single metal heater and wooden planks arranged in bunks. Look out too for the spoiled voting slips from the 1940 'election', with the names of the single candidates crossed out and comments scrawled across the bottom in Latvian.

It's not a fun visit and there's a lot of information to take in but the Museum of the Occupation is worth an hour of your time.

The museum is open daily from 11 - 5pm (6 between May and September). Entrance is free, though donations are requested for the upkeep of the collection.

It took Riga's Soviet planners forty years to come up with a Communist-friendly response to the Lavians' Freedom Monument. When they did, they made up for lost time.

Although it's located in Pārdaugava, the Soviet Victory Monument is one of Riga's more visible landmarks, its 79-metre high concrete obelisk resembling a gnarled finger from the right, and more visited, bank of the river.

The main approach is across Akmens tilts and straight up Uzvaras iela (Victory Street). As you get closer the road widens and the monument opens out. The five stars crowning the top of the structure each represent a year of the Soviet war effort. At the base are chiselled statues of Mother Russia and three machine-gun-toting Red Army soldiers pointing towards victory. As a political message, it's not exactly the most subtle. The monument stands on a wide concrete base, stairs leading up from pavement level, and forms the entrance to the city's largest park. Uzvaras Park was surprisinly not laid out by the Soviets but by the pre-WW1 English mayor of Riga, George Armitsted, and named during the inter-war Latvian republic. On snowy days in winter its flat expanse is used by cross-country skiiers. On more politically sensitive days, diehards gather to commemorate the old regime. In the late 1990s two local patriots decided to blow up the monument. The only things they suceeded in exploding, however, were themselves.

Even on a short trip to Riga, Pārdaugava and the Victory Monument merit some exploration. The walk from Old Riga takes no more than fifteen or twenty minutes - or you can take tram number 10 across Akmens tilts.

A twenty-minute ride east of the city centre, Riga's motor museum is the biggest in the Baltic States with two floors and more than two hundred exhibits.

Even if you're not in the slightest interested in classic cars, the Motor Museum has more than enough historical interest to keep you entertained for an hour or so. The star exhibit is a Rolls Royce Silver Shadow driven into the side of a truck by none other than Leonid Brezhnev, whose waxwork dummy sits openmouthed at the wheel. You can still see the damage to the front of the car, which was brought to the museum in the early-1980s. It's just one of a collection of Kremlin automobiles, including a Lincoln Continental presented to Brezhnev by Richard Nixon, Molotov's Rolls Royce, a Mercedes Benz that was a gift to Stalin from Hitler and cars that once belonged to Kruschev, Maxim Gorky and a king of Romania.

Although it's the Kremlin exhibits that draw most casual visitors there are also examples of bicycles made in independent pre-war Latvia, racing cars, Soviet-built saloons, restored World War II jeeps and the only fire engine ever made by the defunct Russo Balt Wagon Factory. There are lots of helpful signs in English explaining not only technical specifications but also the stories behind the vehicles, like the Renault Viva Grand Sport abandoned by the French Embassy when the Soviets invaded in 1940 and the racing motorbikes that once competed on the race track behind the museum, now used by cross-country skiiers and families out for a walk in the woods.

The museum building has a cafe and parking spaces outside. Directly behind, Biķernieku Forest has a number of walking trails and monuments to the Jewish inhabitants of Riga who were executed by the Nazis from 1941 to 1944.

The easiest way to reach the museum by public transport is on the number 5 bus, which runs between the Central Train Station and the Mežciems suburb. Tickets cost 40 santimes each way. Get off at Motormuzejs and the museum is directly across the road. Admission costs one lat fifty. The musuem is closed on Mondays and at the Christmas and New Year holidays.

All roads in Riga lead eventually to the Freedom Monument. It's the centrepiece of the city, a symbol of the liberty and survival of a country which has been under occupation for all but fifty of the past eight hundred years.

Symbolically sited on Brīvības bulvāris (Freedom Boulevard), on a spot once home to a giant equestrian statue of Peter the Great, the monument was planned as a memorial to soldiers killed in the Latvian War of Independence, fought between the end of World War 1 and the signing of the Treaty of Riga two years later. Unveiled in 1935 and made of granite and copper, the slender column is 42-metres high, tapering to a copper figure of a woman holding three golden stars - one for each of the ancient regions of Latvia. The base, reached by a red granite staircase, is divided into thirteen groups depicting folklore characters, Guards of the Fatherland and scenes of family and work life, marching infantry and historical events such as the Russian Revolution of 1905. The staircase and base are open to the public, but the room inside is currently used only for storage.

Every visitor to Riga comes across the monument at some point in their stay. A 200-metre long pedestrianised strip, flanked by a park and the National Opera House, leads out of the Old Town, opening to a wide square. An honour guard patrols the foot of the monument between 9 and 6pm. On special days the base is covered with flowers or forms the starting point for marches and commemorations. Understanding its propaganda value, the Soviet authorities initially planned to have the monument dismantled. Instead they settled for building a rival across the river. In June 1987 five thousand people gathered here to commemorate the victims of the Soviet occupation. The movement grew - in some cases the crowds around the monument numbered half a million - and three years later ended in Latvia regaining its independence.

To visitors used to Nelson's Column or the Lincoln Memorial, the Freedom Monument might not look so very special. But in Latvia it matters.

It really does.

Opened in 1994, the Latvian Railway Museum is just a few hundred metres the other side of Akmens tilts in Pardaugava, across the river from the Old Town. Its collection is made up of more than a thousand period artefacts, photos and documents, housed in an old engine warehouse.

Unlike bigger, more hands-on museums such as the National Rail Museum in Britain, this is a place for enthusiasts only, with little in the way of interactive exhibits or English-language explanations. The old rolling stock outside - including a German steam train and Soviet passenger diesels - can be seen without buying a ticket and most of what's on show inside is incomprehensible unless you speak Latvian or Russian. The exceptions are a waiting room grandfather clock, still ticking out the seconds next to inter-war tourist posters for Riga's seaside, and a model railway built by the curator featuring scale models of 1960s stations. For 20 santimes, he'll demonstrate it to visitors, though sadly you can only look and not touch. There's also an interesting collection of black-and-white photos of Riga Central Station at various points in history, including a painted mural of all the destinations (including Tallinn and Moscow) and a large hanging portrait of Lenin which has now been replaced by a supermarket sign. The rest of the collection is a jumble of old pieces such as signalling equipment, uniforms, telephones, ticket stubs and track implements. Unless you're desperate to escape the cold, you can walk through most of it in around thirty to forty-five minutes.

Although the one lat admission is cheap and the location convenient if you're on the way to the Soviet Victory Monument, there are far more interesting museums in Riga than this one.

The museum is open from 10-5pm Tuesday to Saturday.

As you'd expect in one of Europe's most war-ravaged nation states, there is a lot to see at the Latvian Museum of War. Founded in 1916 in honour of the Latvian Riflemen units, it's appropriately located in the Old Town's Powder Tower, a 14th century fortification still pockmarked with cannon shot.

Although the displays kick off with a small section on the Christian conquest of pagan Latvia and the later Swedish occupation most of the museum's space is devoted to World War One onwards. The artefacts are well-presented and for the most part accompanied by English texts explaining their historical significance.

There are exhibits on everything from the Latvian troops fighting alongside their Russian colonial masters in the First World War to the independence battles of 1918 to 1920 and their later involvement in the Russian Civil War. Wall boards explain the historical background to each event, illustrated by armour, uniforms, official documents, memorabilia and period photographs. Most interesting of all are the personal items of Latvians fighting on opposing sides in the Russian Civil War, a video detailing the activites of the independent Latvian army in the twenty year period between the wars, and the photos of Riga during and after the Nazi invasion.

However, the most intriguing part of the museum is that which deals with Latvia under the Soviet occupation. There are homemade posters, Communist placards and banners, photographs of anti-Soviet partisans and a large room, decked out atmospherically in red, detailing the fate of those who lived under and opposed the forty odd years of dictatorship. The exhibition ends with the Road Towards the Barricades - photos and text on the freedom protests of the late-1980s and the actions of the Latvian diaspora overseas.

Entrance to the museum (closed Mondays and Tuesdays) is free. You'll need around an hour and a half to see everything properly.