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Riga was founded in 1201 by Bishop Albert, who relocated the Livonian bishopric here and set about building the trading city that joined the Hanseatic League by 1282. For five centuries Riga was the eastern anchor of a trade network connecting it to Lubeck, Hamburg, and Bruges, and the merchant wealth produced a city center that survived well enough to be designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The medieval Old Town, Vecriga, contains the House of the Blackheads (a guild hall for unmarried merchants, bombed in 1941 and rebuilt in the 1990s on its original footprint), Riga Cathedral begun in 1211 as the largest medieval church in the Baltic states, and lanes that change character with every turning.

What sets Riga apart architecturally is what happened between 1897 and 1913, when rapid industrialization funded a building boom in Art Nouveau that produced at least 800 surviving facades, more than anywhere else in Europe.

Alberta Street is the set piece, where architect Mikhail Eisenstein (father of filmmaker Sergei) covered facades in masks, goddesses, lions, and organic ornament so dense it requires standing still and looking up for several minutes to begin to absorb. The Latvian National Opera and the National Theatre anchor the performing arts scene, and the city hosted 900 cultural events as European Capital of Culture in 2014.