Our next goal and one of the major ones for the day is the Museum of the History of Riga and Navigation. It is an interesting mix but it makes sense as Riga’s history is intertwined with the history of navigation in the area. It is one of the oldest museums in Europe starting in 1773 as a private collection and only growing over the years and is being housed now in a former part of the former Dom monastery.
We try to get a family ticket (max 2 adults and 2 children) but they really refuse to sell it to us (2 adults) as it seems we need to have (2?) children to qualify. Quite weird. Either way we enter the museum and are starting from the Stone and Iron Age settlements in the area.
We are really impressed that even some shoes were preserved more than 2,000 years, likely a bog type effect when interring people in the area. There was also a trove of gold objects found in the vicinity and it is interesting to see how similar the jewelry then and now are.
The next room is quite interesting also with a recovered ship skeleton and house foundations showing how people lived and traveled during those times.
As Riga became a Hanseatic City its riches grew and the next sections are focused on that. With riches comes envy and there is information regarding when and how the walls were constructed and who tried or succeeded to conquer the city over the years.
We are the only people in the museum it seems besides the caretakers which is quite fun as we can explore the exhibits in peace and even take off our masks from time to time.
Next is a surprise for us, a huge room and we are somehow on the top level. We find out it is called the Column Hall and it has exhibits both on the top and bottom floor. This room is dedicated to the history of Riga under the tsarist regime and even has a large tableau of Peter the Great anchoring the room.
There are a few paintings describing the burning of the Riga suburbs ahead of the Napoleonic siege to make the siege more difficult, likely those are the areas that now are the Art Nouveau part of the city. And the city was not conquered however the question remains if it was even necessary especially as the blaze burned a lot more of the town than initially envisioned.
And what is an exhibit about that era without dueling pistols? It is interesting that there were even sets for dueling, was it really happening that often? Or was the set created afterwards when dueling was already on the wane but romanticized? Who knows?
As we get in the next section the caretaker points us to a section with some beautiful intricate objects. We assume they are made of porcelain but this section does not have an English guidebook so we don’t really know but still it is quite interesting.
Next section is the interbellic independence era. There are some nice exhibits of how people dressed how the rooms looked and even the presidents desk from that period. As a country they seemed to be quite happily free, at least until Stalin and Hitler decided unilaterally that they don’t deserve freedom.
There are two more rooms to see, the first one has a display of many models of modern ships. Here there is no English translation so we have to guess that these are ships from the Soviet era, but we are not sure if they are military or not.
The second room also has no translations but it is focused on medieval ships. The models are quite intricate and interesting and we spend some time admiring them before moving on.
Before leaving the museum we need to go to the restroom where we see one of the weirdest signs ever that tells us to…we have no idea?! Prop the door, push the door? Who knows? And then it is on to the Dom, our museum ticket allows us to visit the Dom also which is quite nice.
