Exploring the New Town's Art Nouveau Architecture, The KGB Corner House and the Baltic Sea Resort Jurmala
Before flying to Riga, I had no idea what Art Nouveau architecture was. I read about it prior to our visit and was intrigued to learn that Riga New Town has almost 800 buildings in the Art Nouveau style - more than any other city in Europe.
I am no architecture buff but I always appreciate something beautiful and really love old style European buildings (not that I can tell you what period they belong to!!). So when we arrived in Riga, we decided to do a walk through the New Town and check out these buildings.
In case you need to brush up on your art history (like I did), Art Nouveau refers to an artistic movement that swept through Europe between the 1880s and World War I. Art Nouveau involved a philosophy that beautiful things could benefit the people who saw them. The end of the 19th-century was a time of increasing industrialization and mass production of cheap, poorly-made goods. Artists, designers, and architects reacted against this trend and advocated a return to craftsmanship and a belief that art should be incorporated back into everyday life.
Art Nouveau was an expression of an idea known as Gesamtkunstwerk, the thought that all of the arts should be reintegrated. The Art Nouveau movement included fine artists and illustrators, textile and wallpaper designers, and glass and jewelry designers. It also included interior designers, furniture designers, and architects. Beauty and design were just as important to functional objects like buildings as they were in fine art, and architects became some of the most prominent practitioners of Art Nouveau.
During our stroll, we came across a beautiful Art Nouveau building nicknamed "The Corner House". Ironically, this beautiful building was turned into something extremely ugly and terrifying for the Latvians. The Corner House was the former headquarters of the USSR State Security Committee ( the KGB), and is now a museum and symbol of the oppressive regime that governed and terrorized the Latvian population for 50 years. The last KGB and the last political prisoners had only left this building in 1991!! It is a brilliant museum and really captures the terror and oppression of Communist Latvia and the shocking interrogations, torture and executions that happened in this Art Nouveau Corner House. We spent over an hour here.... highly recommend.
Late afternoon, crispy cold but sunny and bright, we hopped on the decrepit local train from the Riga central station and made our way to Jurmala the largest and most famous beach resort on the Baltic sea (and only a half an hour ride away from Riga). This little town is so pretty and quaint. The beaches have soft white sand, are wide, clean, and are 26 kilometers long!! However, this gorgeous beach is a bit of a waste as we were there in July, the peak of summer, and it was cold! Jurmala however has more to offer than just beaches, it is lined with pine forests bordering the coastline and dotted with beautiful historical buildings. If you have time, there are also nature parks to explore (which we didn’t visit unfortunately). We really enjoyed walking along the beach and later browsing the pretty boutique shops and resting our legs in one of the quaint cafes in the town.
We returned to Riga for dinner and dined again in our favorite restaurant Petergailis.
Off to Tallinn tomorrow!