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Riga
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RIGA
is the undisputed Baltic metropolis, a major port and industrial centre of nearly a million people. The city was founded by Albert von Buxhoeveden, a German canon who arrived in 1201 with twenty shiploads of crusaders to convert the Latvian tribes to Christianity. The main Hanseatic outpost in the region, Riga was run by German nobles and merchants even when wider political control passed to other powers, starting with the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the late sixteenth century. After a subsequent period of Swedish rule Riga became part of the Russian Empire in 1710 and during the second half of the nineteenth century it developed into a major manufacturing centre. Badly damaged during World War I, the city made a comeback during the first Latvian independence and remained a major centre after the country was swallowed up by the Soviet Union in 1940. Under the Soviets, the influx of Russian immigrants reduced the Latvians to a minority in their own capital - forty-seven percent of the city's population is now Russian, with a further sixteen percent made up of other non-Latvian nationalities. These days Riga has a boom-town feel with a small but conspicuous section of the population making big bucks from the get-rich-quick opportunities thrown up by the switch to full-blown market economics. Other useful information
for tourists (each section contains more specific sub-sections): |
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Latvia,
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