Centrs (Centre of Riga)

LATVISKI

Apartment house on Brivibas Street 68
2007.09.09.

History and outstanding values

Centrs consists mainly of ornate many-storied apartment buildings from second half of 19th century - beginning of 20th century. This neighborhood belongs to world's most outstanding ensembles of Ecclectic style and Jugendstil buildings - it looks like an endless labyrinth where in all directions stretch streets lined with many hundreds of buildings with beautiful, colourful facades. Just in few places in these quartals interfere newer buildings or vacant squares.

Wooden buildings from late 18th - early 19th century testify that this neighborhood has got more ancient history. It is rather hard to reconstruct the development of city in contemporary Centre because over the last centuries here it was allowed to build only wooden structures which perished during the wars. It is known that more intense development here took place in the middle of 18th century. Then in the area of Centrs (leaving an empty place around the Old City) there were built numerous Barocco style wooden buildings, many were quite ornate. This suburb was burned down in 1812, during the war. After the conflagration there was marked off the current street network and in few years there were built hundreds of wooden buildings in Classicism style. Rather many of these wooden buildings survive unchanged up to this day.

Especially rapid development in Centrs started in the middle of 19th century, when there was dismantled the fortification system of Old Riga. Over the next decades there was modified the fortification moat, which was turned into City Channel. In site of fortifications and empty shooting ranges there developed beautiful rings of boulevards with splendid parks and gardens, numerous representative buildings. Further away from Old Riga there was built a flower of Riga Ecclectic style and Jugendstil - many hundreds of ornate tenement houses. It seems, no one in Riga has been able to learn all these buildings in his life - in daily courses everyone can notice unnoticed splendour. Buildings along the streets don't form monotonous walls - the sight is freshened up with small wooden buildings from the first half of 19th century and small squares.

Besides the building ensemble in its entirety there could be mentioned the following separate beautiful monuments: Gardens around the City Channel with Bastejkalns Hill, Vermane garden, Latvian National Opera, Esplanade park, Birth of Christ Orthodox Cathedral, Old St. Gertrude Church. Pompous tenement houses can be seen along Alberta, Elizabetes, Vilandes and Rupniecibas streets. Hurried tourists manage to see Alberta Street which is included in many popular tourist routes - but they should take into account that similar buildings here are lined along the streets for many kilometres.

Centrs together with Old Riga were included in the list of UNESCO World Heritage monuments in 1997.

List of described monuments

Table lists the described monuments of Centrs. Grey colored monuments have not been preserved up to this day.