We walked round the corner to encounter The House of the Black Heads, which we visited later. Instead the others wanted to go to the ex-KGB centre situated just outside Riga centre.
Wandering through Riga centre we came across Freedom Monument with plenty of police in attendance and the main Orthodox Church of the City
We walked onto the KGB centre. The entrance appeared to be just a run down office with a door on the corner. Inside is a tale of horror where the Russian State used informers, torture, any method of physical and psychological pressure to quell any dissent. The walls told how brave men and women, defied and suffered for their religious beliefs and their hopes for Latvian independence. Now of course Russia has a ruler who follows this KGB tradition and follows the same instincts of fear and punishment for those that criticise.
From this grotto of terror we headed for enlightenment at the Latvian Art Museum a fine imposing building. We entered by the back door and ascended the stairs to buy tickets. We began to climb the wide staircase towards the exhibits when instructed to turn back down and to divest ourselves of our coats and jackets. No one is allowed to wear a coat inside the exhibition area.
All the works are attributed to Latvian artists and include works from 1700s to the present day. Many of the images seemed to reflect artistic movements already established in other areas of Europe. Below are some of the images that caught my fancy. In the section dedicated to the latest paintings a lot of the works reflected a lot of anger and angst possibly due to the former Soviet occupation which had not been possible to express until after 1990.
We all needed something to eat by the time we had finished and we stumbled across HuMMus an Israeli restaurant. A very minimal menu offered humus as one would expect. Harry and I chose the soup option which came with a very dried out pitta bread which was only edible when soaked in the soup.
We decided to try and book a nice restaurant for our final night in Riga. On the internet we found a place that offered traditional Latvian food. Closed said google but on the web site they offered the date as being available. We booked later to find that they only opened because they had a large party already booked.
From our snack at Hummus we returned to the House of Black Heads. Directed to the cellar to begin with where the 14th century foundations still stood we found out how the Brotherhood acquired their name and a little of their history.
The group of merchants from the 13th C and part of the Hanseatic League had adopted St Maurice as their patron saint. The saint had been an early Egyptian Christian commander who lost his life in the Roman Empire defying the emperor in 2nd C North Africa. As a result much of the symbolism on display depicted a black merchant.
The House had been destroyed by Soviet bombing as the Germans retreated from Riga at the end of the war only leaving the cellars still existing. The beautiful building waited until 1990 to be restored and was finished in 1995. To be so high on the new governments priorities must show the importance of the symbolic nature of the building.
In the evening we arrived at the Salve Restaurant and Garry and I enjoyed the 5 course tasting menu with Jon only eating a bowl of pasta. The restaurant hadn’t picked up any other bookings apart from the party of 8 on the other side of a wall. I didn’t think anything about the food that stood out as exceptional, but the rye bread that stood on the table for our arrival. However the food represented good value for €30 and I enjoyed it.
We received a nudge to leave at 10 pm and wandered back to the hotel after consuming an adequate amount of alcohol.