Art Nouveau Architecture Walking Tour, Riga

Riga has approximately 800 Art Nouveau (Jugendstil) buildings, representing approximately one-third of the total architectural stock of the city centre. This is the highest concentration of Art Nouveau architecture in the world, surpassing even Brussels and Barcelona. The buildings were constructed during a single extraordinary period of economic expansion from 1896 to 1914, when Riga was the third-largest city in the Russian Empire, a major industrial and trading port, and flush with German and Baltic merchant capital. They are extraordinary.

The facades of the buildings in the Alberta and Elizabetes streets — the main Art Nouveau districts — are covered in decorative elements that range from floral motifs and female faces to mythological figures, animals, and abstract geometric patterns, all executed in high relief in the local sand-plaster that allowed extremely detailed work. Mikhail Eisenstein (father of the film director Sergei Eisenstein) designed many of the most extreme examples: buildings at 4 Alberta Street and 2 Smilsu Street are among the finest pieces of ornamental architecture produced anywhere in Europe.

The Art Nouveau Museum at 12 Alberta Street reconstructs an early 20th-century Riga apartment with original furniture, fixtures, and objects. It is an exceptional interior design museum and an education in how the wealthy German merchant class of the Baltic lived at the height of empire. Riga's old town — a separate UNESCO World Heritage Site — adds the medieval layer: St Peter's Church, the Black Heads House, and the medieval city walls complete a remarkable architectural stratification.