Riga Castle

Stand still for a moment and listen. Behind you, trams rattle along the river road. In front of you, the wind comes off the Daugava, broad and grey, and carries the cry of gulls across the square. The walls rising ahead of you are pale and plain. They are not decorated like a palace in Vienna or Paris. They look solid and guarded, which fits a building that has been fought over, burned, rebuilt and argued about for almost seven hundred years.

This is Riga Castle. Today it is the official residence of the President of Latvia. If the national flag is flying from the tower, that is part of a daily ritual here. But the building began life as something very different. It was a fortress built by knights who did not trust the city around them. The city, in turn, did not trust them either. That tension is the key to everything you see.

In the Middle Ages, Riga was a busy trading city on the Baltic Sea. It belonged to the Hanseatic League, a network of merchant towns across Northern Europe. The Livonian Order also held power in this region. They were a military order of German knights, monks who carried swords. The merchants wanted freedom to trade and govern themselves. The knights wanted control. In the early fourteenth century, after years of conflict, the townspeople destroyed the Order's earlier castle inside the city walls.

The knights won the wider war, and the punishment was unusual. The citizens of Riga had to build a new castle for the Order, with their own labour and money. Work began around 1330. The new fortress stood outside the old city walls, here on the riverbank. That location was deliberate. From here, the knights could watch the river traffic and keep the city at arm's length. Think about that as you look at the walls. They were raised by people who resented every stone.

The story repeated itself. In the late fifteenth century, the townspeople rose against the Order again and wrecked much of the castle. Once again they lost, and once again they were forced to rebuild it. The reconstruction was completed in the early sixteenth century, under Wolter von Plettenberg, one of the most powerful masters of the Livonian Order. So the castle you see was, in a sense, built twice as a penalty. Few buildings in Europe carry that kind of history in their foundations.

After the Order lost power, the castle passed through many hands. Riga came under Polish-Lithuanian rule, then Swedish rule, then the Russian Empire. Each new power used the castle as the seat of its governors. Each one changed it a little. Towers were added or strengthened. Wings were rebuilt. Windows were cut into old defensive walls. If you walk around the outside, you can see these layers. The shapes do not match perfectly, because no single architect ever planned the whole building.

Here is a detail many visitors miss. The castle is not one neat block. It is a group of wings arranged around a courtyard, with round towers at the corners. The oldest parts are the most closed and heavy. Later additions have larger windows and smoother plaster. Look for places where the wall surface changes, or where a line of windows suddenly stops. Each of these marks a moment when someone decided the building needed to serve a new purpose.

In the twentieth century, the castle took on a new meaning. When Latvia became an independent state after the First World War, the castle became the residence of the head of state. During the Soviet decades, it served other uses, including as a home for museums and youth organisations. After Latvia restored its independence in the early 1990s, the president returned here. So this fortress, built for foreign knights, became a symbol of Latvian self-government. History has a sense of irony.

Then came a second surprise, a modern one. In June 2013, while the castle was under renovation, a large fire broke out in the roof and upper floors. Smoke rose over the Old Town, and firefighters worked through the night. Many people in Riga remember watching it from the river embankment. Restoration took years. When you look at the roofs today, part of what you see is the result of that careful rebuilding. The castle has burned and recovered again, as it has so many times before.

If you can, walk slowly along the riverside facade. This is the side that faced ships coming up the Daugava. Medieval Riga depended on that river for trade, for timber, grain and furs moving between the inland regions and the sea. From here, the knights could see who was arriving and who was leaving. Today, the view is of traffic, the long cable-stayed bridge to the north, and the low skyline of the far bank.

Now turn back towards the Old Town. The square in front of the castle is Castle Square. From here, narrow cobbled streets lead into the medieval centre. Within a short walk you will find the Latvian Parliament building, the Cathedral of Saint James, and the Three Brothers, a row of old merchant houses. The distance is small, but it matters. The castle stood just outside the merchants' world, watching it. The two sides of medieval Riga lived almost wall to wall.

The castle is a working state building, so much of it is closed to casual visitors. Guards and official cars are a normal sight. Some parts have housed museums over the years, and arrangements change, so check what is open on the day you come. Even from outside, though, the building rewards patience. Walk the full outline if you can. The corners, the towers and the courtyard gateways each show a different century.

Before you leave, look up one more time. The pale walls, the dark roofs, the flag moving in the wind off the river. Knights built this place to control a city. That city later turned it into the home of its own elected president. As you walk back into the cobbled lanes of the Old Town, listen for the change in sound. The river noise fades. The streets close in. You are stepping from the knights' side of Riga into the merchants' side once more.