Riga, in the middle of the Baltic States, is known for its many buildings in the Art Nouveau style, which had a brief period of popularity from 1890-1910. So why do 40% of Riga's structures have this distinctive style?
For a long time Riga had laws that all buildings in the city & outskirts must be made of wood.
These old-style wooden buildings seem to have lots of law offices in them
No one is in this spooky place.
The art nouveau buildings are all apartment buildings now
Art nouveau was decorative & architectural at the same time
There are sculptural faces everywhere on these buildings
This small piece of a building, around the entryway, has 21 sculptures!
She's huge!
Even this futuristic robot is screaming & so are his robot buddies all over the building
This is a real live man. He lives in one of these art nouveau apartments & probably spends his life dealing with gawkers & camera flashes & selfie sticks. Maybe he feels like shrieking too.
For a long time Riga had laws that all buildings in the city & outskirts must be made of wood.
This is the law school
This was so that, if word came that an army was about to try to occupy Riga (which, like many Eastern European countries has been occupied by different nations enough times to cause national whiplash), all Riga residents had to burn down their own houses, so the invading army couldn't occupy them. After numerous mass house-burnings, Latvians had had enough of this practice, especially once they burned everything down based on erroneous information. Their desire to create a new type of city happened to coincide with an infusion of wealth in Latvia during the years when Art Nouveau was all the rage.
This is one of the two most famous Riga art nouveau facade faces
This is the most famous one, jutting out profile-wise in a startling way
There's lots of shrieking going on among these decorative people & animals
Roaring
Two screams & a look of consternation
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