Vecrīga

Riga was founded as a port town on the Daugava River in 1201. Bishop Albert, who had arrived the year before with 23 ships, moved the seat of the Livonian bishopric from Uexkull to Riga in 1201 and laid the cornerstone of the cathedral in 1211. The old town, Vecriga, is the area once enclosed by the walls, before the city expanded greatly in the late 19th century.

Riga joined the Hanseatic League in 1282 and grew rich on trade with central and eastern Europe from the 13th to the 15th century. In the 17th century it was one of the largest towns of the Swedish crown, until Russian troops under Peter the Great besieged and took it in 1709 to 1710. Most of its earliest buildings were lost to fire or war, but the medieval street pattern survives.

In the 19th century the walls were pulled down and water from the Daugava was led into their line to make the City Canal, with a ring of boulevards and new suburbs beyond. These filled first with wooden neoclassical buildings and later with stone Jugendstil, and by the early 1900s there were about 50 notable Art Nouveau buildings in the medieval core and more than 300 in the rest of the centre. The historic centre was inscribed in 1997.