Riga

Distance

14.0 km

Time

about 4 hours

Streets

67

Steps

3 streets with steps

Start point

Melngalvju nams

Phone needed while walking

no

Works offline

yes

Expires

never

Landmarks

What I would eat first.

Landmarks are fruit. The bigger the sight, the bigger the bonus.

• Melngalvju nams 1,500 points

  The busiest front on Town Hall Square. There is so much on it that I lose count, and I have time to count. Someone once left this house a request in writing. Someone else, a long time later, did as it asked. I am not telling you what it said.

• Rīgas Doms 500 points

  The largest medieval church in the Baltics, on a square of its own. That is a lot of brick to chew. The real treat is inside, and it is louder than it looks. Go in and see.

• Rīgas Pils 500 points

  A castle that still has a tenant, and the tenant has an office. Long ago two birds argued over a spot on its roof, and the town took the outcome very seriously. Who won, and why it mattered, you hear at the castle.

• Svētā Pētera baznīca 500 points

  A lift takes you up the tower to a gallery 72 metres high, and the Old Town lies below like a laid table. Before you go up, look at what sits on the very top. It is not the first one. How many came before it, you hear up close.

• Kaķu nams 250 points

  Two cats sit on a roof on Līvu laukums, and they are not up there for the view. What they are up there for stands on the other side of the square. I am not telling you what.

• Laimas pulkstenis 250 points

  It went up to fix a very human problem. Then it picked up a sweet tooth and a second job. Stand under it on the hour and find out.

• Pulvertornis 250 points

  A stout round tower, built like me: thick in the middle and in no hurry. It was named after sand long before it was named after powder. Look closely at its walls. Something is lodged in them, and the usual explanation is not the right one. The right one is waiting for you at the tower.

• Trīs brāļi 250 points

  A row of houses on Mazā Pils iela, shoulder to shoulder like loaves on a bakery shelf. They are not the same age, and one of them wears a face for a reason. I am not telling you which one, or what the face is for.

• Zviedru vārti 250 points

  An archway with a house sitting on top of it, on the last standing stretch of the town wall. They say it exists because someone could not be bothered to walk around. I have never hurried anywhere, so I find this hard to follow. I am not telling you who it was.

Eating

Actual food.

Riga has no signature dish, and I stopped hunting for one. The list worth carrying is Latvia's. The country has put a handful of its foods under protected European names, and five of them make my list: a rye bread, a rye pie, a fresh cheese, a white butter and a large grey pea. Rye twice, milk twice, one pea. That is a pantry, not a menu, and I have always preferred a pantry.

Checked 24 September 2026.

Why here

Somebody stood here and decided.

A small river, the Rīga, ran into the Daugava here and made a natural harbour, right where the trade routes crossed. By the second half of the 12th century this was the economic centre of the whole lower Daugava. The town itself was put together at the river mouth by joining two older settlements. Where trade routes cross, the food comes to you. I like the principle.

Sources: www.rigamuz.lv, medievalheritage.eu

Who ruled

Everyone who thought they owned this.

I outlasted all of them. It is the one thing I am good at.

1201–1581

The Bishops of Riga, archbishops from 1255, and the Livonian Order were the overlords, and the city council worked in between. By the late 13th century Riga was a Hansa town and an important centre of the transit trade. Two landlords over one small town. I do not even share a pebble.

Sources: www.rigamuz.lv

1581–1621

When Livonia came apart in the early 1580s, Riga went to the Polish king Stephen Báthory and spent about four decades as part of the Polish-Lithuanian state.

Sources: www.rigamuz.lv, www2.mfa.gov.lv

1621–1710

King Gustav II Adolf of Sweden took Riga in 1621, and the city stayed under the Swedish crown for almost a hundred years. In that time it became the mightiest fortress on the eastern shore of the Baltic Sea. A fortress is a pantry with very thick walls. I approve of pantries.

Sources: www.rigamuz.lv, www2.mfa.gov.lv, de.wikipedia.org

1710–1918

In 1710 Riga passed to Russia, and the city became the administrative centre of the province of Vidzeme in the Russian Empire. It stayed that way for two centuries. I have napped longer.

Sources: www.rigamuz.lv, www2.mfa.gov.lv, de.wikipedia.org

1918–

The independent Republic of Latvia was proclaimed on 18 November 1918, and Riga was its leading city from the start, even if capital status only became official in 1931. On 4 May 1990 Latvia declared the renewal of its independence, and on 21 August 1991 it was fully independent of the Soviet Union. Thirteen years to make the obvious official. I respect a slow decision.

Sources: www.rigamuz.lv, www2.mfa.gov.lv, de.wikipedia.org

Three facts

Three things I know about this place.

1. The Rīdzene, the little river the town grew up beside, widened into a pond about 50 metres across in the 13th century, right where 13. janvāra iela runs today. The street is dry now. I looked for fish anyway.

   Sources: web.archive.org

2. A short stretch of the medieval town wall still stands in the courtyard behind St John's Church, next to the former Dominican friary, with its outer face turned to Kalēju iela. Almost all the rest is gone. This piece stayed out of sight behind a church, which I respect as a survival plan.

   Sources: medievalheritage.eu

3. At the turn of the 15th and 16th centuries the whole walled town fitted inside a circuit of about 2200 metres: some 22 hectares. A whole Hanseatic city on a patch I could graze in an afternoon.

   Sources: medievalheritage.eu

Counted from the streets in the level itself, not from a guidebook.

• 67streets
• 725dots
• 11.7km of street
• 14.0km on foot
• 4.0hours at a stroll