Riga & Western Latvia

Before the crusaders, western Latvia belonged to several Baltic and Finnic peoples: the Curonians of the coast, known as sea raiders, the Semigallians of the Zemgale plain, and the Livonians, whose Finnic speech survived along the Kurzeme shore into living memory. German crusaders under Bishop Albert founded Riga in 1201, and within a century the Livonian Order had subdued the region. Riga joined the Hanseatic League and grew rich on trade down the Daugava, while its German burghers and the Order quarrelled for control of the city.

When Livonia broke up in 1561, the last master of the Order became Duke of Courland and Semigallia under Polish–Lithuanian overlordship, and the duchy that followed defined Kurzeme and Zemgale for more than two centuries. Its most ambitious ruler, Duke Jacob, built a merchant fleet in Ventspils and briefly held colonies on Tobago and on the Gambia River. Riga itself passed to Sweden in 1621 and to Russia in 1710, and the duchy was annexed by Russia in 1795; its last great monuments are Rastrelli's palaces at Rundāle and Jelgava.

Under the tsars Riga became one of the empire's largest industrial ports, and Liepāja received a vast naval base. In the Second World War the Nazis murdered most of Riga's Jews, many in the Rumbula forest in 1941, and German forces held out in the Courland Pocket until May 1945. Soviet rule brought industry, migrants and closed military zones along the coast; since 1991 those zones have opened and Riga has remained Latvia's largest city.

Riga has long been a city apart: German-speaking for centuries, then heavily Russian-speaking in the Soviet era, and today home to large Latvian- and Russian-speaking communities, which gives the capital a bilingual street life that the rest of the region lacks. It is also the country's cultural engine, with the National Opera, the Dome Cathedral's great organ and the main venues of the Song and Dance Festival.

Kurzeme holds two distinctive minorities. The Livonians of the northern coast, between Kolka and Ventspils, have their own flag and a language kept alive by learners and enthusiasts since its last native speakers died, and the Livonian Coast is a protected cultural area. Inland, around Alsunga, the Catholic Suiti community preserves a cultural space listed by UNESCO as intangible heritage in need of urgent safeguarding. Liepāja has its own identity as the music capital of Latvia and as the "city where the wind is born", a line from a popular song.

Religion here is mostly Lutheran, with Orthodox and Catholic churches in Riga. Midsummer is celebrated with bonfires in every village, and in Riga the Old Town fills for the Christmas market.

Riga has about 600,000 people, and with its surrounding municipalities, from Jūrmala (about 50,000) to Salaspils and Ogre, the capital region holds roughly half of Latvia's population. Jelgava (about 55,000) is the main town of Zemgale; Liepāja (about 65,000) and Ventspils (about 33,000) are the Kurzeme ports; Kuldīga, Talsi, Tukums and Bauska are market towns of 10,000 or so.

The economy is concentrated in Riga: finance, IT, logistics, the port, retail and government. Ventspils and Liepāja live from shipping, oil and grain transit, and metalworking, and have both lost trade since Russian transit declined. Zemgale's flat, fertile soil makes it Latvia's grain basket, and Kurzeme is timber, fishing and small farms, with an ageing population and many empty villages inland.

Commuter trains and traffic into Riga set the rhythm on weekdays; in summer the city empties on Friday towards Jūrmala, the coast and country houses. Current issues are the housing costs of the capital, depopulation in rural Kurzeme and Zemgale, and the shift of the western ports towards new trade.

Riga eats like any European capital, but the Central Market shows the region's larder: smoked flounder from the coast, cold-smoked sprats (šprotes), river lamprey (nēģi), dark rye bread (rupjmaize), sauerkraut, and tubs of curd cheese (biezpiens). Riga Black Balsam, the bitter herbal liqueur, has been made in the city since the 18th century.

Kurzeme is proud of sklandrausis, an open rye-crust tart filled with mashed potato and sweetened carrot and sometimes sprinkled with cinnamon or caraway, and of the smoked fish of its coastal villages. Liepāja and Ventspils add salted herring (siļķe) with boiled potatoes and cottage cheese.

Zemgale is the grain country, and grey peas with fried bacon (pelēkie zirņi ar speķi) are an old farmhouse standby here, as across Latvia. At midsummer every table has Jāņu siers, a fresh cheese flavoured with caraway, with beer.

Riga comes first. The Old Town, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, has the Dome Cathedral, St Peter's Church with its tower lift, the House of the Blackheads, the Three Brothers and Riga Castle; beyond the canal, Alberta and Elizabetes streets hold Mikhail Eisenstein's Art Nouveau façades. The Central Market sits in former Zeppelin hangars, and the Ethnographic Open-Air Museum stands among pines by Lake Jugla.

Jūrmala stretches for over 20 kilometres along the Gulf of Riga, with the pedestrian Jomas iela at Majori, wooden villas and the Dzintari concert hall; at its western end, Ķemeri National Park has a boardwalk across the Great Ķemeri Bog. Sigulda, east of Riga on the Gauja, has Turaida Castle's red-brick tower, Gūtmanis Cave, the Krimulda estate, a cable car over the valley and the bobsleigh track.

In Zemgale, Rundāle Palace and its gardens lie near Bauska, whose castle ruins overlook two rivers, and Jelgava keeps Rastrelli's second ducal palace. Kurzeme's highlights are Kuldīga, a UNESCO-listed old town beside the Venta Rapid, Europe's widest waterfall; Ventspils with its Livonian Order castle and beach; and Liepāja, with its long beach, the Great Amber concert hall and the barracks and prison of Karosta. The coast road north runs through the Livonian villages to Cape Kolka and the Slītere National Park forests behind it.