This was part of A weekend in the Baltics - Day 2 🇱🇻 🔗.
Our Alternative Riga Free Tour by Riga Free Tour started at St. Peter’s Church. From there, we made our way to the Riga Central Market (Rīgas Centrāltirgus), a massive complex housed in former German Zeppelin hangars. It is an incredible indoor/outdoor market with stalls selling fresh fruits, vegetables, cheeses, smoked meats, and prepared Latvian dishes.
We then headed across the tracks to the Moscow District (Maskavas forštate), an area historically known for its wooden architecture and a reputation for being less safe in previous decades. We saw the Latvian Academy of Sciences (Latvijas Zinātņu akadēmija); its “Stalinist Empire” style is typical of the Soviet era and is often referred to by locals as “Stalin’s Birthday Cake”.
We stopped at the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Jesus, a striking wooden building where we learned more about the district’s history and the challenges it faced during the 19th and 20th centuries.
We walked past the historic Bānūzis warehouse toward the train station. After a quick 10-minute break, we moved on to the Bergs Bazaar (Berga Bazārs), a beautifully renovated 19th-century shopping arcade filled with upscale boutiques, restaurants, and cafes.
We finished our journey by walking through the Vērmane Garden (Vērmanes dārzs), Riga’s oldest public park, to our final stop: the Freedom Monument (Brīvības piemineklis). It stands as the most significant symbol of Latvian independence, sovereignty, and national unity.
