Style

I got more relaxation today, but in a more active way.

In the morning I visited the Rīga Art Nouveau Museum, followed by the Janis Rozentāls & Rūdolfs Blaumanis Museum. They are in the same building - ground and top floors respectively. Rozentāls was one of the country’s leading painters and Blaumanis one of its leading writers. The building was designed by Konstanīns Pēkšēns, one of its leading (Art Nouveau/Jugendstil) architects. 

With me so far?  

It was great. 

The building is on Alberta iela, where several of the city’s best Art Nouveau buildings are located. 

In the afternoon I had a tour of Latvia’s former KGB headquarters. It is two buildings along the street from my apartment. It is cold. It is gruesome. But, it will help to give the average visitor a little understanding of what people here endured under the Soviet regime. 

The finale is the execution chamber, where those not being deported to Siberia/imprisoned were shot in the back of the head before being loaded into a waiting truck for transport to a mass grave in the forests outside the city. 

Sharing a cell with 20 other people is not ideal in our Covid infested world, but I did not know the tour numbers would be so large. 

It has been hard to choose my Blip and Extras today. I have gone for the staircase in the museums building (Alberta iela 12) for the Blip and my favourite other building in that street as Extra 1. Extra 2 is the front door at nearby Strēlnieku iela 1, and the KGB cells is Extra 3.