Riga travel guide

Top 10 sights in Riga

Ranked by Wikipedia language editions — proven fame.

1. 

   1© Chris06 · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Riga Cathedral

   The Lutheran cathedral, begun in 1211 and enlarged for four centuries, so that Romanesque, Gothic and baroque are all legible in one building. Its organ of 1884 had six thousand seven hundred pipes and was then the largest in the world; it is still played in recitals.

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2. 

   2© Nenea hartia · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Freedom Monument

   A monument of 1935 to the dead of the War of Independence, forty-two metres high, with a woman at the top holding three gilded stars for the historic regions of Latvia. The Soviets never dared demolish it, but laying flowers at it could get you deported, which people did anyway.

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3. 

   3© Jorge Franganillo · CC BY 2.0

   Riga Castle

   A castle founded in 1330 by the Livonian Order and rebuilt many times, now the residence of the president of Latvia. A fire in 2013 gutted part of it during restoration and the repairs took years; the courtyard is open when the flag says so.

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4. 

   4© Diego Delso · CC BY-SA 3.0

   St. Peter's Church

   A Lutheran church first recorded in 1209, whose tower has marked the Riga skyline ever since. Rebuilt in brick Gothic and given a baroque spire, it burned in 1941 and was restored in the 1970s; a lift now climbs to a gallery at 72 metres.

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   Riga Radio and TV Tower

   A television tower of 1986 rising three hundred and sixty-eight metres on an island in the Daugava, carried on three splayed concrete legs — the tallest tower in the European Union. The observation deck at ninety-seven metres reopened after a long closure.

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6. 

   6© Diego Delso · CC BY-SA 3.0

   St. James's Cathedral

   A brick Gothic church of 1225 that has been Catholic, Lutheran, Jesuit and Catholic again, and has served as the cathedral of the Riga archdiocese since 1923. Its slim green spire is one of the four that define the old town skyline.

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7. 

   7© Granada · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Nativity Cathedral, Riga

   A neo-Byzantine Orthodox cathedral built between 1876 and 1884 for the Russian garrison, with five gilded domes. The Soviets turned it into a planetarium and lecture hall with a café in the sanctuary; it was returned to the church in 1991 and restored.

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8. 

   8© Nenea hartia · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Riga Motor Museum

   The largest historic vehicle museum in the Baltics, whose exhibits include the armoured limousines of Stalin and Molotov and the Rolls-Royce that Brezhnev crashed while driving it himself — displayed with the damage and a mannequin of him at the wheel.

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9. 

   9© Donath, Otto · CC BY-SA 3.0 de

   Riga Ghetto

   The area of the Moscow suburb into which the Germans forced Latvia's Jews in 1941, and later Jews deported from Germany and Austria. Some twenty-five thousand people from it were shot in the Rumbula forest over two days in November and December 1941.

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10. 

    10© Diego Delso · CC BY-SA 3.0

    Riga Central Market

    One of the largest markets in Europe, opened in 1930 in five pavilions built like zeppelin hangars — the design borrowed from airship sheds. Meat, fish, dairy and vegetables each have their own hall, and the whole thing is inside the World Heritage area.

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1. 

   1© Olgerts V · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Monument to the Liberators of Soviet Latvia and Riga from the German Fascist Invaders

   A Soviet monument of 1985 to the Red Army units that took Riga in 1944, with a seventy-nine-metre obelisk and bronze figures. It became the focus of rival demonstrations every May, and Latvia demolished it in August 2022 after the invasion of Ukraine.

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2. 

   2© Nenea hartia · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Latgale Neighborhood

   The district south of the old town on the right bank, called the Moscow suburb until 2024 after the old road east. It held the ghetto, keeps most of Riga's surviving wooden houses, and is now the poorest and most interesting part of the city.

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3. 

   3© Diego Delso · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Powder Tower

   The last of the city's defensive towers, rebuilt in 1650 and used to store gunpowder. Nine cannonballs are embedded in its walls, left there deliberately, and the Latvian war museum has been attached to it since the 1930s.

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4. 

   4© Michael Vokabre Camera location56° 51′ 23.4″ N, 24° 54′ 55.2″ E View this and · CC BY-SA 2.0

   Riga Zoo

   The city zoo, founded in 1912 in the Mežaparks woods beside a lake, holding around four thousand animals. It survived two world wars and Soviet neglect, and now works on Baltic and northern species.

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5. 

   5© Misters32 · CC BY-SA 4.0

   Āgenskalns

   A residential district of Riga on the west bank of the Daugava. Whole streets of nineteenth-century wooden houses survive, so this is where to come for the timber architecture of Riga, and the market hall of 1898 still trades.

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6. 

   6© Christopher Walker from Krakow, Poland. Crop and rotation by User:Sozi · CC BY 2.0

   St. John's Church

   A church begun as a Dominican monastery chapel in the thirteenth century, with a stepped brick gable and a Renaissance interior. Two monks are said to have had themselves walled into it alive to be venerated as saints, and a niche is shown as the place.

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7. 

   7© Edgars Košovojs · CC BY-SA 3.0

   St. Gertrude Old Church

   A Lutheran church at 8 Ģertrūdes Street in Riga. It is a parish church of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Latvia.

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8. 

   8© FLLL · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Peitav Synagogue

   A synagogue of 1905 in art nouveau with Egyptian revival detail, and the only one in Riga to survive the war — the Germans did not burn it because it stands wedged among old town buildings that would have gone with it. It was badly damaged in 1941 and restored in 2009.

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9. 

   9© Diego Delso · CC BY-SA 3.0

   Holy Trinity Orthodox Church

   An Eastern Orthodox church at 2 Meža Street in Pārdaugava in Riga in Latvia.

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10. 

    10© Nikodem Nijaki · CC BY-SA 3.0

    Great Cemetery

    The principal cemetery of Riga from 1773 and the burial ground of the Baltic German elite who ran the city for seven centuries. Soviet authorities cleared the monuments after 1945; what remains is a park with fragments of tombs among the trees.

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