ONE DAY TOUR / LATVIA / OLD RIGA & ART NOVEAU TOUR

 

Travel first to the Art Nouveau District, a flamboyant area of the city and a favorite. Your drive around here will send you backwards to a wild time in Riga's history, where facades of buildings have nude nymphs, majestic lions, goblins and images of a period of expressive movement which started in Paris. This area survived the war and many of the buildings are under renovation, a wonderful thing to witness. Your guide will speak of the Jugendstil period that flourished here.
Close by you will find Old Town. Riga straddles the Daugava River, with Old Town resting on its eastern flank. Old Town's skyline is dominated by three steeples - St. Peter's, Dome Cathedral and St. Jacob's. Parks and boulevards form a wide band that borders Old Town. Your initial look at Old Town will see the contrasts of the old buildings and the new casinos. Your initial look at Old Town will show the contrasts of the old and new buildings.
 

• Old Riga - is the historical and geographical centre of Riga on the right bank of the Daugava. Old Riga covers a relatively small inner area of the 13th-18th century fortifications where unique monuments of medieval architecture which, surprisingly, have survived two world wars are concentrated;

 

• The Dome -  is the Latvian Archbishop’s cathedral and a church of the Dome parish.  Historically, the Riga Dome was the Livonian Order’s central cathedral until the disintegration of the Order in 1561. In the medieval period, the Riga Dome Cathedral was the largest and one of the oldest sacral buildings in Latvia and the entire Baltic Region;

 

• St. Peter’s Church - is one of the oldest and most valuable monuments of medieval architecture in the Baltic States. It is located in the historical centre of Riga and on 4 December 1997 was included among the UNESCO World Heritage sites;

 

• Three Brothers - is the oldest block of dwelling houses in Riga. The houses are situated on Maza Pils Street. The name “Three Brothers” has been given on the basis of similarity to the Three Sisters in Tallinn – a group of warehouses in the Old Town;

 

• House of the Blackheads - originally called the New House, was built in 1334. It has been reconstructed on numerous occasions – from 1522, when the entrance was supplemented with doorstones, up to late 19th century, when the house was decorated with lion figures above its entrance and a rendition of St George appeared in the adjacent building;