Latvia's cities and rural hideouts are the alternative European destinations to watch

The last time I was in Latvia, you could just about still hear the swish of the recently dismantled Iron Curtain. In 1994 I was living in St Petersburg. Riga was a 12-hour train journey west. I was on vacation with a bombastic Russian-speaking Ukrainian friend, travelling first to Latvia’s then sleepy capital, then onwards to Jurmala, the country’s most touristy – and most Russian-dominated – seaside destination. He acted as if he owned the place, in a strict “I’m only here for the beer” sense. This was when Russian speakers referred to this region as Pribaltika – an ideologically charged Soviet term encompassing all the Baltic countries – as if it were a region and not three separate countries (Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia). Even back then, when I was out and about with my friend, proclaiming loudly in Russian about how cheap everything was, people were wary of us. You could sense this was a place desperate to follow its own path, in the opposite direction of any kind of colonising influence.

Thirty years on, and well into a new century, I resolved to experience Latvia in its own right – free, wild, self-determining – with my own eyes, open to the place for the first time and without thinking of it as an adjunct to that lost country, “the former Soviet Union”. It turns out what Latvians really want is empathy and a sense of an appreciation of their history. Within a few hours of arriving in Riga, half a dozen completely unconnected people had spontaneously – and slightly impatiently – asked me: “Have you been to the Museum of Occupation yet?” This is not a visitor attraction that would normally top my list. But I was intrigued. And they were right: you cannot understand this country without knowing what happened here within living memory.

This museum tells the story behind the suspicion and exhaustion I saw on people’s faces in 1994. The pain and paralysis of occupation is comprehensively documented: first came the Soviets in the 1940s, then the Nazis, then the Soviets again. Thousands of lovingly curated photographs, letters and videos from that period depict everything the Latvians did to maintain a sense of autonomy in the face of cultural annihilation. A heartbreaking glass display case showed items buried in the 1940s in a family’s garden and only dug back up again in 2014: a handbag, hand-embroidered mittens, a rusty colander.

After I emerged, weeping and reeling somewhat, from the Museum of Occupation, I headed for the bourgeois comforts of the Riga Art Nouveau Centre. It houses a collection of painstakingly reconstructed furnished rooms from the early 1900s, and explains how the beginning of the 20th century became a false dawn for Latvia’s independence movement. This museum is in the city’s most delightful neighbourhood, on the corner of Alberta Iela (“iela” means “street”), home to some of the finest examples of art nouveau architecture in the world. Nearby are old-fashioned teashops, antique stores and trendy cocktail lounges such as Cloud Nine.

Zigita Lavrinovicha runs a shop opposite the Art Nouveau Centre called Otto Racens, named after her grandfather. It is packed with vintage crockery and glassware, beautiful hand-stitched Latvian mittens (traditionally made by brides-to-be for their “hope chest”) and her own avant-garde fashion collection. A designer and collector of vintage pieces, Lavrinovicha spent a long time as a wardrobe mistress at the Latvian National Opera: “I’ve seen it all over the years,” she says, “Russians. Soviets. War. Peace. War again. I just want to invite people into a corner of the world where you can still find a little beauty.” It’s very hard to resist her offer of tea and Champagne.

This kind of encounter is typical in Latvia. Most people speak English, and they are thrilled to share their excitement about being part of the EU since 2004 and to tell you at great length everything they love about their country. To immerse yourself in this place is to discover something ancient and profound, long-forgotten elsewhere in Europe. With its walkable cobbled streets bustling with bierkellers and cocktail bars, the Gothic Old Town does feel a bit like Hamburg or Amsterdam. But step out of this quarter and you are in that art nouveau wonderland. And journey just half an hour outside of the capital and you can explore acres of forest. The place is a wonderful combination of highly prized culture and glorious nature: unspoilt, protected, precious.

The next day we head into the countryside to meet Latvia’s most famous actor, Juris Zagars, director of the 800-seat concert hall at Cesis, northeast of Riga. As he points out, the place is an anomaly in the modern world. This is a quaint town with cobbled streets, one of the oldest medieval castles in Latvia and a population of just 15,000. And yet its concert hall is packed every Saturday night and there’s a restaurant, Kest – run by the charismatic chef Maris Jansons – which recently received a Michelin Guide Special Award for Service. Cesis is typical of rural Latvia: quietly confident and full of random but pleasant surprises.

Zagars has just directed John Malkovich in a theatre production here, and the Hollywood star is already planning a return visit: “He loves Latvia because no one bothers him for selfies here,” says Zagars. Latvians are too cultured for that. A few minutes’ walk from Kest – where the five-course tasting menu and matching drinks flight includes an extraordinary elderflower and rhubarb martini – is the Global Center for Latvian Art. Run by Chicagoan gallerist Karlis Kanderovskis, it displays more than eight decades worth of Latvian diaspora art, including paintings by his grandfather Janis Kalmite, the Latvian expressionist painter whose work has been compared to Rothko’s.

Evidence of Latvia’s desire for identity, meaning and authenticity is everywhere, along with traditional pagan symbols, which can be seen on flags, doors and roofs. Near Cesis, we stop off at Maizes Maja – The House of Bread – a traditional farmhouse hosting breadmaking workshops. The bread is decorated with these symbols marked out in seeds, whether a cross, meaning “unity”, arrows (“fate”) or a star (“eternity”). Today’s class is run by Kristina Sprudža, assisted by her 11-year-old twin daughters Charlotte and Henriette. Although they are dressed in traditional costume and burst into song about Latvian independence (the girls are both students at the local conservatoire), they’re keen to let me know that they’re also big K-pop fans.

Their mother gently pushes the conversation back on track, talking movingly about what happened one week in 1944 when her great-grandmother was making bread in the kitchen and had to abandon the house for several days because soldiers were passing through: “The dough was made in German times. And the bread was baked in Russian times.” I hear variations of this sentiment from almost everyone I meet: Latvians were the careful custodians of their own country while so many others tried to own it. “We are the fifth generation to live on this property. You cannot root yourself unless you are on the land. The house was always ours but during Soviet times the farm became part of the kolkhoz [collective farm].” Her great-grandparents, who lived into their 90s, are buried on the land. It is usual here to talk like this, to be open, earnest and sincere. “Bread tastes like freedom and love. And we have to remember that because of what is happening in Ukraine.”

Nearby are more artisan businesses that open themselves up to anyone passing. Many of them are run by young parents in their 30s and 40s who decided to make a change during the pandemic to embrace a quieter life. You hear, time and again, how important it is to them to build a future in Latvia: since joining the EU, Latvia has lost a fifth of its population to emigration. Ervins Labanovskis runs an organic birch-sap business from a timber cottage. He uses an old family recipe to turn birch sap into drinks and syrups. Last year he collected nearly 18,000 gallons of sap during the three-week window in March when the bark of birch trees oozes this liquid (like maple syrup but less sweet and more minty). “Latvians drink it fresh to clean the body,” he explains. The shelves in Riga airport are groaning with the stuff, alongside rhubarb sparkling wine, another local favourite.

Labanovskis has bought some of the surrounding forest back from Ikea and is planting the world’s first park of sap-producing trees. The pagan symbols of Latvia have taken on a whole other life here in rows of trees arranged in a shape dedicated to each of his children. The first configuration, the cross sign for his daughter Mara, is expected to be visible within three years. This is a country that is literally about planting roots. A few miles away, his neighbour Janis Matvejs, a small craft cider maker, has planted 400 apple trees and is attempting – virtually single-handedly – to establish cider-making in Latvia. His orchard is idyllic in the early evening light and he sighs contentedly as he serves a plate of cheese and a cider that tastes exactly like prosecco. He has no big plans to expand, he says: he’s happy running the place sustainably himself.

Once you are holed up in the countryside here, you feel miles from anywhere, surrounded by birch forest. The locals call this part of the world “Latvia’s Switzerland” (Zagars even runs an improbable ski resort nearby: cross-country skiing is popular, as are dry ski slopes). We spend lazy days in the area around Ligatne and Sigulda, with its caves, medieval castles and folk markets where you can stock up on embroidered socks. There’s an unmissable cable car ride at Sigulda across the heart of the forest, which Latvian families queue up for on autumn weekends as the leaves turn. You can drive for miles here and not see a soul, then suddenly happen upon a fairytale village of exclusively wooden houses, perfectly preserved, an architectural tradition dating back to the 17th century.

The true Latvian rural experience, encapsulating all the earthiness of this place, is the sauna, or pirts. I sign up for the hardcore version: the black sauna, also known as smoke sauna, at Ziedlejas in Latvia’s Gauja National Park. Pirts is at the extreme end of spa treatments: a cross between a shamanic experience, a purification exercise and the ultimate sauna. Before you enter this glorified shed, the pirtniece (“bathhouse attendant” – a revered figure in Latvian mythology) releases the smoke from inside. The walls are thick with black soot. It feels like walking into a furnace. The ritual should be undertaken naked, while the pirtniece wears a smock and a felt hat. It is intimate: you either do it alone or with only one or two other people. And it is supervised, with the pirtniece taking a role that is somewhere between a high priest and the kind of specialist massage therapist Gwyneth Paltrow probably has on speed dial.

Over the next three hours, I will move in and out of the steam and soot as she leads me into a forest pond and bathes me like a baby, only to draw me back into the furnace for another round of extreme heat, accompanied by folk singing and the rustling of mysterious percussion instruments, all while exfoliating my body repeatedly using honey and the leaves of linden, birch and rowan.

At one point the pirtniece hands me a bitter brew of wormwood tea. “Drink it. It will help your body get rid of everything you don’t need. And it will get rid of all the parasites in your mind,” she says. Turns out that when your country has been occupied for the best part of seven centuries, what you really need is a ritual herbal tea to rid you of parasites. It’s intense, weird and mind-bending, but also profoundly calming and grounding. I feel the effect of the tea, the pirts and of Latvia for weeks afterwards. Like I’ve visited a part of Europe – and a way of thinking and of being – that hasn’t existed for hundreds of years.

Where to stay in Latvia

Dome, Riga

On a side street in Riga’s Old Town, the 15-room Dome Hotel is a coolly earth-toned renovation of a 17th-century townhouse, with truffles on the menu, steam baths in the spa and a sauna overlooking the iconic dome of the city’s cathedral.

Grand Poet Hotel, Riga

Close to the Freedom Monument, and overlooking the canal boats of Bastejkalna Park, the Grand Poet has an imposing frontage that belies its splashily bright velveteen interiors by Gothenburg design studio Stylt – and an overriding playfulness, from the Snob restaurant and bar to the expansive Hedonic pool and spa area.

Ziedlejas, Sigulda

Amid idyllic nature around an hour’s drive from Riga, a series of glass-fronted A-frame cabins overlook a little lake, with a collection of pirts saunas dotted around, including traditional smoky black pirts. The lack of mobile signal, wi-fi or food on site leaves room for lake swims and headspace.

Villa Santa Hotel, Cesis

Further inland, amid the birch forests near mediaeval Cēsis, the three lovely clapboard art nouveau villas of the Villa Santa Hotel were once used as a sanatorium – and there remains a restorative essence to this 30-room stay, with lavender and linden blossom rituals in the spa and a smart Latvian-Asian restaurant.

Where to eat in Latvia

Tails, Riga

Amid starkly clean decor, locals sit at the bar for daily specials such as oysters, crab and ceviche, or take a relaxed table seat for perfectly executed risotto, fish shrimp bisque and an ever-expanding selection of seafood platters. The Pleasecake dessert, a cheesecake made with brie, is bonkers but brilliant.

Address: Antonijas iela 6a, Centra rajons, Rīga, LV-1010, Latvia
Website: tails.lv

Barents, Riga

Hotly tipped for a Michelin star, seafood-focused Barents is as ambitious as anything in Latvia. The Norwegian Sea diver scallops and rowan berry negronis are unmissable, and the excellent wine list is presided over by the 2023 winner of Association de la Sommellerie Internationale’s Best Sommelier of the World contest, Raimonds Tomsons, who also runs the Barents Wine Collectors pop-up nearby.

Address: Smilšu iela 3, Centra rajons, Rīga, LV-1050, Latvia
Website: barents.lv

3 Pavāru, Riga

Elegant but buzzy, in the Old Town’s hip Jacob’s Barracks, 3 Pavaru (“Three Chefs”) is another game-changer. Its titular chef-owners work exuberant magic on ingredients such as pike perch, fjord trout, catfish and whipped goat’s cheese. The signature dish often involves bearded head chef Pāvels Skopa drizzling sauce and pesto over greaseproof paper, Jackson Pollock-style.

Address: Jacob's Barracks, Torņa iela 4, Centra rajons, Rīga, LV-1050, Latvia
Website: 3pavari.lv

Kest, Cesis

In the old town of Cēsis, chef Māris Jansons says he is “aiming to raise your eyebrows in pleasant surprise”, and his five-course tasting menus deliver, with dishes such as eel and smoked quail egg. There’s a white-tablecloth sense of theatre to it all – and a magical adjoining cocktail lounge that’s only for restaurant guests.

Address: Valmieras iela 1, Cēsis, Cēsu pilsēta, Cēsu novads, LV-4101, Latvia
Website: kest.lv

Pavāru māja, Ligatne

Part of the Slow Food Cooks’ Alliance, this charming cottage restaurant in a former 1901 maternity home uses as much produce as possible from its garden and the surrounding Gauja National Park. Owner Eriks Dreibants is on a mission to restore local plants and fruits, such as sour cherries, Latvian yellow turnips and ancient herb seeds. Children can run wild in the “nature observation garden” while adults feast on four-course lunches or six-course dinners with dishes including forest mushroom broth, carrots with hemp and farm cheese, and beef cheek with Latvian yellow apple.

Address: Pilsoņu iela 2, Līgatne, Līgatnes pilsēta, Cēsu novads, LV-4110, Latvia
Website: pavarumaja.lv

Regent offers a five-night Riga & Rural Latvia Short Break from £2,555 per person, including flights, private transfers, experiences and B&B stays; regent-holidays.co.uk. To find out more about Latvia, visit latvia.travel