Riga's past is layered in brick and timber: a Hanseatic port founded in 1201, then ruled in turn by Germans, Swedes, Poles, Russians and Soviets. Three days lead from medieval guild silver and gate towers to KGB cellars and the barricades of 1991.
Founded in 1773 around physician Nikolaus von Himsel's private cabinet, the oldest museum in the Baltics fills the Cathedral chapter house with medieval guild silver, executioners' swords and Hanseatic trade charters. Open 10:00–17:00, closed Mon–Tue.
Riga's oldest dwellings stand in a row on Mazā Pils iela: No. 17 from about 1490 with a Gothic stepped gable, No. 19 from 1646, No. 21 from the late 17th century. Their tiny windows date from a time when window size was taxed.
The 14th-century Powder Tower is 25 m across with walls three metres thick, and Russian cannonballs from 1656 are still lodged in its brickwork. Nine halls inside trace the Latvian Riflemen of WWI, the 1918–20 War of Independence and the Soviet deportations.
Cut straight through a house in 1698 under Swedish rule, this is the only survivor of Riga's eight city gates. The executioner lodged in the flat above; opposite runs the ochre 18th-century Jacob's Barracks and the longest remaining stretch of medieval wall.
The black 1971 block on Latviešu strēlnieku laukums reopened in 2022 after rebuilding and documents 1940–1991 under Soviet and Nazi rule: deportation lists, secret-police files and a reconstructed Gulag barrack from Vorkuta.
Kārlis Zāle's 42-metre column, paid for by public donation and unveiled in 1935, carries Milda holding three gilded stars for Kurzeme, Vidzeme and Latgale. Soviet authorities never dared demolish it despite plans to do so.
The 1912 apartment block at Brīvības iela 61 housed the Cheka and later the KGB. The basement cells, interrogation rooms, padded box and execution corridor remain unrestored, with prisoner registration cards displayed upstairs.
Five rough granite slabs on Bastion Hill mark where cameramen Andris Slapiņš and Gvido Zvaigzne, schoolboy Edijs Riekstiņš and two militiamen were shot by Soviet OMON troops on 20 January 1991. Each stone stands where the person fell.
An open-air site of reconstructed ghetto houses and a cattle wagon beside the ruined Great Choral Synagogue, naming the roughly 70,000 Latvian Jews murdered — most shot in Rumbula forest on 30 November and 8 December 1941.
Riga's Moscow suburb kept its low wooden houses because building in stone outside the walls was long forbidden. Jēzus baznīca on Elijas iela, rebuilt in 1822 after Napoleonic-era burning, is the largest wooden church in Latvia.
A tarred black timber shed marks where dockworker Žanis Lipke hid 55 Jews in a bunker dug under his woodshed from 1941. Visitors descend into a dark pit lined with glowing wells that recreates the hiding space. Open Tue–Sun 12:00–18:00.
Āgenskalns preserves the wooden classicism that fire and war erased elsewhere in Riga. The restored 19th-century timber houses of Kalnciema kvartāls earned a Europa Nostra award, and the surrounding streets are full of carved porches.