Explore Latvia

Riga

The Baltic's largest city packs more than 800 Art Nouveau buildings into its compact centre — a concentration unmatched anywhere in Europe — with the medieval Old Town's cobblestone lanes and guild halls just a short walk from the exuberant jugendstil facades of the Alberta and Elizabetes streets. Riga's Central Market, housed in five repurposed First World War Zeppelin hangars, is one of the continent's great food halls, and the city's café and cocktail scene has earned it a reputation as the Baltic's most cosmopolitan night out.

Jūrmala

The 33-kilometre resort strip along the Gulf of Riga coast has been the Latvian elite's summer escape since the tsarist era, its wide white-sand beaches backed by Art Nouveau wooden villas fragrant with pine. The Dzintari Forest Park, the open-air concert hall, and the pedestrianised Jomas iela promenade give Jūrmala a genteel, old-fashioned character that sets it apart from livelier Baltic beach resorts.

Sigulda

Dubbed the 'Switzerland of Latvia', Sigulda commands the Gauja River valley from three medieval castle sites — Turaida, Sigulda, and Krimulda — with the ruined red-brick Turaida Castle above the sandstone cliffs being the most photographed castle in the country. In winter the town hosts Latvia's Olympic bobsled track, while summer brings cable-car crossings over the valley, hiking trails through Gauja National Park, and the legendary Turaida Rose folk legend.

Cēsis

The best-preserved medieval town in Latvia grew around a 13th-century Livonian Order castle whose twin Gothic towers still dominate the old market square, now surrounded by low-slung houses in dusty ochre and powder-blue. The New Castle next door houses the regional museum, and the forested trails leading into Gauja National Park make Cēsis the natural base for exploring Latvia's most scenic river valley.

Kuldīga

Latvia's newest UNESCO-listed town earned its inscription in 2023 for a uniquely intact 17th-century urban fabric of timber merchant houses lining streets that run down to the Venta River and Europe's widest natural waterfall, the Ventas Rumba. In spring, the sight of hundreds of vimba fish leaping up the two-metre fall draws visitors from across the country — a tradition celebrated with a local fish market on the riverbanks.

Liepāja

Latvia's third-largest city sits on the Baltic coast between a lake and the open sea, its character shaped by centuries as a trading port, a tsarist military base, and, after 1991, a gritty post-Soviet reinvention as a centre for Latvian rock music. The Karosta naval district — a hermetically sealed fortress town built for the Russian navy and closed to the public until 1994 — is one of the most atmospheric Cold War heritage sites in Northern Europe.

Daugavpils

Latvia's second city is the cultural capital of the Latgale region in the country's southeast, its predominantly Russian-speaking population giving it a character quite distinct from Riga. The Daugavpils Fortress — a vast 19th-century military complex on the Daugava River — houses a contemporary art centre dedicated to the abstract expressionist Mark Rothko, who was born here in 1903, drawing art pilgrims from around the world.

Rundāle Palace

The baroque palace of Rundāle, designed by Bartolomeo Rastrelli (architect of the Winter Palace in St Petersburg) for Ernst Johann von Biron in the 1730s, is the finest example of 18th-century aristocratic architecture in the Baltic states. Its 40 restored state rooms, gold-accented White Hall, and formal French garden stretching behind the south facade make it a day trip essential from Riga or Bauska.

Bauska

Set at the confluence of two rivers in the Semigallia farmlands south of Riga, Bauska is home to a dramatic ruined castle complex — a 15th-century Livonian Order tower alongside the remains of a 16th-century palace — overlooking water meadows on both sides. The town is also the natural base for visiting Rundāle Palace, just 12 kilometres south.

Ventspils

The prosperous port city on the Courland coast has reinvented itself from Soviet-era industrial hub to one of Latvia's most family-friendly destinations, with a children's open-air ethnographic museum, a beach ranked among the cleanest on the Baltic, and a lively summer season centred on the medieval Order Castle turned regional museum. The Ostgals fishermen's quarter preserves colourful wooden houses that give a sense of Ventspils before the oil terminal era.

Turaida

Perched above the Gauja valley across from Sigulda, the red-brick Turaida Castle (reconstructed to its 13th-century appearance) anchors a museum reserve that stretches through forest to the Dainas Hill sculpture garden and the Turaida Church — one of the oldest wooden churches in Latvia. The legend of the Turaida Rose, a 17th-century tragic love story, gives the site a romantic gravity that makes it one of Latvia's most visited heritage destinations.

Rēzekne

The 'Heart of Latgale' is a cultural hub in Latvia's predominantly Catholic southeast, its blend of Latvian, Russian, Polish, and Jewish heritage producing a distinct regional identity visible in the vernacular architecture and the local dialect. The Freedom Monument and the ruins of the Rēzekne Castle above the River Rēzekne are the town's landmarks, while Latgale's tradition of distinctive ceramic pottery-making is kept alive in workshops throughout the region.

Cape Kolka

The remote tip of the Courland Peninsula where the Baltic Sea meets the Gulf of Riga is one of Latvia's wildest landscapes — a windswept spit of sand and pine forest within the Slītere National Park, where the sea crashes on the cape from two directions simultaneously. The nearly deserted fishing villages of the Livonian Coast nearby preserve the heritage of Latvia's indigenous Livonian people in a string of wooden houses along one of the country's most atmospheric coastal roads.

Gauja National Park

Latvia's largest national park follows the ancient Gauja River valley through 920 square kilometres of sandstone cliff, pine forest, and medieval castle ruins stretching from Valmiera to Sigulda. The park's hiking and cycling trails, cave systems carved into the red sandstone, and the cluster of castle sites at Sigulda, Cēsis, and Turaida make it the most popular nature destination in the country.

Riga's Old Town preserves one of the most complete medieval townscapes in the Baltic region, its 13th-century street plan still legible beneath layers of Gothic guild halls, 17th-century warehouses, and the extraordinary concentration of Art Nouveau architecture that makes up Europe's largest Art Nouveau district just beyond the old city walls. The Daugava riverfront, the Riga Cathedral, and the Three Brothers — a terrace of houses ranging from the 15th to the 17th century — anchor the UNESCO-protected core.

A chain of survey triangulation points stretching 2,820 kilometres from Hammerfest in Norway to the Black Sea coast of Ukraine, the Struve Arc was established between 1816 and 1855 by the astronomer Friedrich Georg Wilhelm von Struve to measure the exact size and shape of the Earth. Latvia shares custody of this transnational inscription with nine other countries; the Latvian points lie in the Vidzeme and Latgale regions, marked by small stone pillars in the landscape.

Inscribed in 2023, Kuldīga's old town is the best-preserved example of a small-scale early modern Courland timber merchant town in the Baltic region, its 17th and 18th-century urban fabric almost entirely intact — including the brick bridge over the Venta River, the oldest road bridge in Latvia, dating from 1874. The town's famous Ventas Rumba waterfall, the widest natural waterfall in Europe at 249 metres, adds a natural spectacle to the cultural heritage.