Riga (Latvian: Rīga, pronounced [riːɡa] ( listen)) is the capital and largest city of Latvia. With 658,640 inhabitants (2012[3]), Riga is the largest city of the Baltic states and home to more than one third of Latvia’s population.[5] The city is an important seaport and a major industrial, commercial, cultural and financial centre of the Baltic Sea region.[citation needed] The city lies on the Gulf of Riga, at the mouth of the river Daugava. Riga’s territory covers 307.17 km2 (118.60 sq mi) and lies between 1 and 10 metres (3.3 and 33 ft) above sea level,[6] on a flat and sandy plain.[6]
Riga was founded in 1201 and is a former Hanseatic League member. Riga’s historical centre is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, noted for its Art Nouveau/Jugendstil architecture and 19th century wooden architecture.[7] The city will be the European Capital of Culture in 2014, along with Umeå in Sweden. The city hosted the 2006 NATO Summit, the Eurovision Song Contest 2003 and the 2006 IIHF Men’s World Ice Hockey Championships. It is home to the European Union’s office of European Regulators for Electronic Communications (BEREC). Riga is served by Riga International Airport, the largest airport in the Baltic states.
Riga is a member of Eurocities,[8] the Union of the Baltic Cities (UBC)[9] and Union of Capitals of the European Union (UCEU).[10] Riga is considered a global city.
The river Daugava has been a trade route since antiquity, part of the Vikings’ Dvina-Dnieper navigation route to Byzantium.[14] A sheltered natural harbour 15 km (9.3 mi) upriver from the mouth of the Daugava—the site of today’s Riga—has been recorded, as Duna Urbs, as early as the 2nd century.[14] It was settled by the Livs, an ancient Finnic tribe.[11]
Riga began to develop as a centre of Viking trade during the early Middle Ages.[14] Riga’s inhabitants occupied themselves mainly with fishing, animal husbandry, and trading, later developing crafts (in bone, wood, amber, and iron).[14]
The Chronicle of Henry of Livonia testifies to Riga having long been a trading centre by the 12th century, referring to it as portus antiquus (ancient port), and describes dwellings and warehouses used to store mostly corn, flax, and hides.[14] German traders began visiting Riga, establishing a nearby outpost in 1158.
Along with German traders also arrived the monk Meinhard of Segeberg[13] to convert the pagans to Christianity. (Catholic and Orthodox Christianity had already arrived in Latvia more than a century earlier, and many Latvians baptised)[13][14] Meinhard settled among the Livs, building a castle and church at Ikšķile, upstream from Riga, and established his bishopric there.[13] The Livs, however, continued to practice paganism and Meinhard died in Ikšķile in 1196, having failed his mission.[18] In 1198 the Bishop Bertold arrived with a contingent of crusaders[18] and commenced a campaign of forced Christianization.[13][14] Bertold was killed soon afterwards and his forces defeated.[18]
The Church mobilised to avenge. Pope Innocent III issued a bull declaring a crusade against the Livonians.[18]Bishop Albert was proclaimed Bishop of Livonia by his uncle Hartwig of Uthlede, Prince-Archbishop of Bremen and Hamburg in 1199. Albert landed in Riga in 1200[14][18] with 23 ships[19] and 500 Westphalian crusaders.[20] In 1201 he transferred the seat of the Livonian bishopric from Ikšķile to Riga, extorting agreement to do so from the elders of Riga by force.[14]
Under Bishop Albert
The year 1201 also marked the first arrival of German merchants in Novgorod, via the Dvina.[21] To defend territory[22] and trade, Albert established the Order of Livonian Brothers of the Sword in 1202, open to nobles and merchants.[21]
Christianization of the Livs continued. In 1207 Albert started on fortification of the town.[21][23]Emperor Philip invested Albert with Livonia as a fief[24] and principality of the Holy Roman Empire.[14] To promote a permanent military presence, territorial ownership was divided between the Church and the Order, with the Church taking Riga and two-thirds of all lands conquered and granting the Order a third.[25] Until then, it had been customary for crusaders to serve for a year and then return home.[25]
Albert had ensured Riga’s commercial future by obtaining papal bulls which decreed that all German merchants had to carry on their Baltic trade through Riga.[25] In 1211, Riga minted its first coinage,[14] and Albert laid the cornerstone for the Riga Dom.[26] Riga was not yet secure as an alliance of tribes failed to take Riga.[25] In 1212, Albert led a campaign to compel Polotsk to grant German merchants free river passage.[21] Polotsk conceded Kukenois (Koknese) and Jersika to Albert, also ending the Livs’ tribute to Polotsk.[27]
Riga’s merchant citizenry chafed and sought greater autonomy from the Church. In 1221 they acquired the right to independently self-administer Riga.[22] and adopted a city constitution[28]
That same year Albert was compelled to recognize Danish rule over lands they had conquered in Estonia and Livonia.[29] Albert had sought the aid of King Valdemar of Denmark to protect Riga and Livonian lands against Liv insurrection when reinforcements could not reach Riga. The Danes landed in Livonia, built a fortress at Reval (Tallinn), and set about conquering Estonian and Livonian lands. The Germans attempted, but failed, to assassinate Valdemar.[30] Albert was able to reach an accommodation a year later, however, and in 1222 Valdemar returned all Livonian lands and possessions to Albert’s control.[31]
Albert’s difficulties with Riga’s citizenry continued; with papal intervention, a settlement was reached in 1225 whereby they no longer had to pay tax to the Bishop of Riga,[32] and Riga’s citizens acquired the right to elect their magistrates and town councilors.[32] In 1226, Albert consecrated the Dom Cathedral,[14] built St. James’s Church,[14] and founding a parochial school at the Church of St. George.[13]
In 1227, Albert conquered Oesel [33] and the city of Riga concluded a treaty with the Principality of Smolensk giving Polotsk to Riga.[34]
Albert died in January 1229.[35] He failed his aspiration to be anointed archbishop[24] but the German hegemony he established over the Baltics would last for seven centuries.[25]
Hanseatic League
In 1282 Riga became a member of the Hanseatic League. The Hansa was instrumental in giving Riga economic and political stability, thus providing the city with a strong foundation which endured the political conflagrations that were to come, down to modern times.
As the influence of the Hanseatic League waned, Riga became the object of foreign military, political, religious and economic aspirations. Riga accepted the Reformation in 1522, ending the power of the archbishops. In 1524, a venerated statue of the Virgin Mary in the Cathedral was denounced as a witch, and given a trial by water in the Daugava River. The statue floated, so it was denounced as a witch and burnt at Kubsberg.[36] With the demise of the Livonian Order during the Livonian War, Riga for twenty years had the status of a Free Imperial City of the Holy Roman Empire before it came under the influence of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth by the Treaty of Drohiczyn, which ended the war for Riga in 1581. In 1621, during the Polish–Swedish War (1621–1625), Riga and the outlying fortress of Daugavgriva came under the rule of Gustavus Adolphus, King of Sweden, who intervened in the Thirty Years’ War not only for political and economic gain but also in favour of German Lutheran Protestantism. During the Russo-Swedish War (1656–1658), Riga withstood a siege by Russian forces.
Riga remained the largest city in Sweden until 1710[citation needed], a period during which the city retained a great deal of autonomous self-government. In that year, in the course of the Great Northern War, Russia under Tsar Peter the Great besieged plague-stricken Riga. Along with the other Livonian towns and gentry, Riga capitulated to Russia, but largely retained their privileges. Riga was made the capital of the Governorate of Riga (later: Livonia). Sweden’s northern dominance had ended, and Russia’s emergence as the strongest Northern power was formalised through the Treaty of Nystad in 1721. Riga became an industrialised port city of the Russian empire, in which it remained until World War I. By 1900, Riga was the third largest city in Russia after Moscow and Saint Petersburg in terms of the number of industrial workers and number of theaters.[citation needed]
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During these many centuries of war and changes of power in the Baltic, and despite demographic changes, the Baltic Germans in Riga had maintained a dominant position. By 1867 Riga’s population was 42.9% German.[37] Riga employed German as its official language of administration until the installation of Russian in 1891 as the official language in the Baltic provinces, as part of the policy of Russification of the non-Russian speaking territories of the Russian Empire, including Congress Poland, Finland and the Baltics, undertaken by Tsar Alexander III. More and more Latvians started moving to the city during the mid-19th century. The rise of a Latvian bourgeoisie made Riga a center of the Latvian National Awakening with the founding of the Riga Latvian Association in 1868 and the organisation of the first national song festival in 1873. The nationalist movement of the Young Latvians was followed by the socialist New Current during the city’s rapid industrialisation, culminating in the 1905 Revolution led by the Latvian Social Democratic Workers’ Party.
Interwar period
The 20th century brought World War I and the impact of the Russian Revolution of 1917 to Riga. The German army marched into Riga on 3 September 1917.[38] On 3 March 1918 the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was signed, giving the Baltic countries to Germany. Because of the Armistice with Germany of 11 November 1918, Germany had to renounce that treaty, as did Russia, leaving Latvia and the other Baltic States in a position to claim independence. Latvia, with Riga as its capital city, thus declared its independence on 18 November 1918.
Between World War I and World War II (1918–1940), Riga and Latvia shifted their focus from Russia to the countries of Western Europe. The United Kingdom and Germany replaced Russia as Latvia’s major trade partners.
World War II and the Soviet Union
During World War II, Latvia was occupied first by the Soviet Union in June 1940 and then by Nazi Germany in 1941–1944. The city’s Jewish community was forced into the Riga Ghetto and a concentration camp was constructed in Kaiserwald. On 25 October 1941, the Nazis relocated all Jews from Riga and the vicinity to the ghetto. By 1942, most of Latvia’s Jews (about 24,000) were killed on 30 November and 8 December 1941 in the Rumbula massacre.[39] By the end of the war the Baltic Germans were forcibly repatriated to Germany.
Riga was recaptured by the Soviet Red Army on 13 October 1944. In the following years the massive influx of labourers, administrators, military personnel and their dependents from Russia and other Soviet republics started. Microdistricts of the large multi-storied housing blocks were built to house incoming workers. By 1989 the percentage of Latvians in Riga had fallen to 36.5%.[40]
In 2004, the arrival of low-cost airlines resulted in cheaper flights from other European cities such as London and Berlin and consequently a substantial increase in numbers of tourists.
