Can you name the stunningly beautiful European city with the world’s biggest deli and the Old World’s largest art nouveau neighborhood? It’s not Paris or Brussels — it’s Riga, the capital of tiny Latvia, the admirably feisty country on the Baltic Sea that regained its independence in 1991, and is now a NATO and European Union member.
Roughly the same size as Boston, Riga is an under-the-radar urban delight. But this will soon change when the city assumes the role of European Capital of Culture in 2014. The yearlong designation includes a calendar of cultural events — such as the World Choir Games, with some 20,000 singers from 90 countries — that will put the Riga on sophisticated travelers’ must-go lists. Once in town, visitors will quickly discover this fascinating port city’s thriving art, restaurant and nightlife scenes.
Riga was founded on the Gulf of Latvia at the mouth of the Daugava river in 1201. This medieval heritage is best discovered while wandering the cobbled lanes of the Old Town — whose atmospheric beauty formed a key component of Riga’s UNESCO World Heritage designation. The small neighborhood houses a veritable greatest hits of the city’s top touristic wonders. There’s the Three Brothers House, a handsome, gabled, 15th-century house that was originally a bakery; the House of the Cat, named for the arched cats looking down from both of its pointed towers, and the Riga Dome, the city’s 16th-century cathedral. (It’s largest place of worship in the Baltics, with one of Europe’s largest working organs.)
The Old Town is also a great place to travel in time. Head for the 1695 Mentzendorff’s House to experience the life of a wealthy Riga merchant family; on Thursday afternoons you can taste pancakes, cooked according to an old family recipe (Grēcinieku street 18). And anyone interested in Riga life during the successive nightmares of the Nazi and Soviet occupations will also want to take in the sobering Museum of the Occupation of Latvia (Strēlnieku laukums 1), with its chilling replica of a barracks room from the Soviet gulag.
Riga’s most gorgeous ’hood is its art nouveau district in and around Alberta iela (Albert Street). This spectacular concentration of some 800 elaborately decorated buildings was built from 1896 to 1913, when Riga was booming. The local tourist office offers a great self-guided walking tour of the area, but the best place to start is at the Riga Art Nouveau Museum (Alberta iela 12), which is housed in an apartment where one of Latvia’s best architects of the period, Konstantīns Pēkšēns, once lived. Pēkšēns designed over 250 art nouveau buildings in Riga, including this spectacularly beautiful building. Another stunner is the Peitav Shul (Peitavas street 6/8), which is the city’s last surviving synagogue after the city’s Jewish community was decimated by the Nazis.
But Riga is not just about architecture and history — the locals clearly know how to have a good time. A great way to join them is to hop a train for nearby Jurmala 30 minutes away — a beachside resort that’s a favorite of Rigans year-round for bracing Baltic beach walks and first-rate and affordable hotel spa treatments.
Exploring the city will make you hungry, so head for the city’s larger-than-life Central Market for a delicious lesson in Latvian cuisine. Housed in a series of hangars originally built to house dirigibles during World War I, the market is Europe’s largest and is divided according to food groups. There’s the fish pavilion, with dozens of stalls selling eel and herring, and endless other local delicacies: hemp-seed butter, honey, pickles and Black Balsams, the herbal elixir that fuels party-hearty Rigans.
Baltic food often gets a bad rap, but Latvian-American chef Kārlis Celms shows off the local cuisine’s lighter side at Cafe 371 (Rīgas Centrāltirgus), a bistro located between two of the pavilions at the Central Market. Clems’ menu changes according to what’s fresh at the market, but dishes like local pike-perch fillet with butter beans, pumpkin and herb-butter sauce and slow-cooked pork belly with celery-root puree and roast apple and kvass (a fermented rye and malt drink) sauce show his style.
The restaurant at the swanky Hotel Bergs (Elizabetes 83-85) is probably the best in town, thanks to chef Nauris Jakusko — with dishes ranging from Baltic herring parfait to rack of veal with morel mushroom mayonais. Bergs’ culinary accolades make this boutique hotel one of the city’s hippest (from $275).