Spires, Art Nouveau and a market in hangars

Riga was a Hanseatic trading port long before it was a capital, and the Old Town on the right bank of the Daugava still shows it: merchants’ houses, guild halls and brick churches packed inside the line of the former walls. Three towers define the skyline, those of the Cathedral, St Peter’s and St James’s, and cobbled lanes run between them to squares set with café tables in summer.

Cross the canal park and the city changes century. Around 1900 Riga was growing fast, and its architects covered whole streets in Art Nouveau: roughly a third of the buildings in the centre belong to the style, with masks, peacocks and long-limbed figures on the façades of Alberta iela and Elizabetes iela. The historic centre is a UNESCO World Heritage site for exactly this mixture.

Daily life gathers at the Central Market, in five former Zeppelin hangars beside the river, where stalls sell smoked fish, pickles, rye bread and forest berries. Order grey peas with bacon, try a small glass of Riga Black Balsam, and if the weather is fine take the train to Jūrmala, where a long pale beach is backed by pine woods and wooden villas.