The Spīķeri

Back blip

These warehouses were built in the late C19, all to a uniform design, out of red brick.  A number were demolished to allow widening of the road.  All fell into disrepair (see extras), but many have now been sympathetically repaired, with the help of considerable funding from the EU.

En route to visit the Spīķeri, we passed the Central Market (see second extra).  These buildings were created from redundant Zeppelin hangers.  The original architect wanted to use the entire hangars, but had to succumb to practicality - only the upper parts were used, on concrete and brick bases.  There are 5 halls in total - so a huge market, and the market runs all day, every day.  We didn't actually go inside any of them, as we had no particular need to buy any meat, fish or other produce - we were flying out later in the day. 

At the far end of the Spīķeri district, we came upon the Riga Ghetto and Latvian Holocaust Museum.  We had not set out to visit there, expecting, as turned out to be the case, that we would find it distressing.  But I'm glad we did visit.  The third extra is from the museum, and is a rather nice collection of Hebrew letters, fashioned from old wood pieces, and which apparently spells "Shalom Riga", though I cannot vouch for this, and a tree, which represents all those who helped the Jews.  Also part of the museum was an incredibly upsetting artwork/history of the persecution of the Roma people by the Nazis, but also subsequently.

After all this intensity, we had a coffee and pastry in a rather nice coffee shop back in the Spikeri, and then walked back to the centre of old Riga.  We briefly visited the "Museum of the history of Riga and Navigation" but found it a bit dry.  Then, after a late lunch, we picked up our cases, and caught a bus out to the airport.  We drove home from Luton far too late to blip last night!

The final extra is "Stalin's wedding cake".  Built by the Soviets, in a similar style to buildings in Moscow, and in Warsaw, it originally housed a farmer's collective, but now is used by the Latvian Academy of Science.  When it was built it was the tallest building in Riga.  I discovered, on researching it for this blip, that we could have got wonderful views over Riga from the observation platform.  Oh well - next time?