Latvia travel guide
Most visitors to Latvia will head for its capital city of Riga - a well-preserved Unesco World Heritage Site. Its guild halls, impressive Gothic cathedral and great market housed in former Zeppelin hangars will impress many. However, time should be made to stray a little further into Latvia's countryside, taking in the summer holiday resort of Jurmala or the ancient city of Cesis.
Top places to visit in Latvia
The main highway of the Baltics is the 1,030-km (640-mile) River Daugava, which starts in Russia and arrives, via Belarus, in the south of Latvia near Daugavpils. German crusaders arrived near the river’s estuary at a place they called Riga, and made it their base for the conquest of the Baltic peoples and the expansion of Hansa trade.
Today, Riga is the most exciting city in the Baltics. It is rich with the architecture of the medieval merchants, who built and funded gabled homes and storehouses. In the expanded late 19th- and early 20th-century city there are exquisite Art Nouveau buildings, many designed by Mikhail Eisenstein, father of the filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein, who was born here. Nearly a million of the country’s 2.3 million population live in Riga, and there is no other city in the country approaching its size. It also has the most exciting market in the Baltics and one of the most popular seaside resorts at nearby Jurmala.
Second to the Daugava is the River Gauja, which is the centre of a fine national park north of Riga. To the east are the more remote blue lakelands of Latgale, a Catholic stronghold and place of pilgrimage where you can find excellent local pottery. To the west is Kurzeme, the former domaine of the Duchy of Courland, where you can explore the well-preserved medieval towns of Liepaja and Ventspils on the Baltic coast and, inland, Kuldiga. To the south is Zemgale, home to the nation’s most stunning Baroque treasure, the Rastrelli-designed palace at Rundale.
The soul of Latvia and the Latvians is not in buildings but in the countryside among its magic oaks and ancient hill forts. People are happiest spending a weekend on the family farmstead tending vegetable gardens, singing songs and drinking beer by a bonfire or just relaxing in a steamy sauna. In a country with countless rivers and lakes and almost 500km (300 miles) of pristine beaches, it is not difficult to imagine why Latvians prefer nature to urban living.