Day 6: RIga: Blackheads and Art Nouveau

October 26th was our first day in Riga. The activities of the day didn't quite go as planned because there were a few issues with our guide, but despite that, we were able to take a preliminary tour of the city. Most notably we saw the House of the Blackheads and we visited the art nouveau district.

House of the Blackheads 

The House of the Blackheads was originally built in the 1300s by a guild of German merchants known as the Brotherhood of Blackheads. However, it was bombed in 1941, thus we visited the reconstruction which took place in the late 1990s. The Blackheads were among the elite in Riga during the middle ages and through the 1700s. They represented an important group of merchants in terms of the trade happening between cities in the Hanseatic League. Even today Riga has an impressive covered marketplace that is an important point of commercial trade for locals. (We visited the market on our second day).
       Unfortunately we could not take a tour of the house because the President of Latvia was residing there at the moment because there had recently been a fire at his palace. Merely the idea that the president's home could fire was a bit shocking to some of us on the travel. Compared to the President of the United States, of course this sort of thing is completely unheard of. Our guide, Davis, on the second day in Riga, told us that there had been a whole crowd of people out on the president's lawn watching it burn. Just imagining it evokes quite a powerful image.

Our group walking through a square. 

After learning about the Blackheads Brotherhood. We took a walk over to Riga's art nouveau district. About 40% of the buildings in Riga's central area represent the art nouveau style of architecture. Moreover, this area showcases some of the most lavish and ornately decorated art nouveau facades in all of Europe; thus they have been given UNESCO world heritage protection. In Riga, the art nouveau style was a way for the newly rich entrepreneurs and professionals who had been educated in St. Petersburg to express their wealth at the turn of the 20th century. On these buildings we can see everything from images representing nature and mythology, to the columns of the Parthenon, to the sphinxes of Egypt.

Art Nouveau District

Before the luxury clothing brands and automobiles, the most common way to communicate wealth (and power) to the community was through the construction of large and elaborate structures; making sure the population knew how important you were.