The Palace in Winter

Rundale

Rundale, a little over an hour drive from Riga, is a beautifully restored Baroque palace once owned by the Dukes of Courland and designed by Francesco Bartolomeo Rastrelli, the architect of many of St. Petersburg's most famous palaces, including the Winter Palace, Peterhof, and Smolny Convent.  It is bea-u-ti-ful. We saw it in winter, when the grounds around it (which have also been restored) were completely buried in snow and impossible to appreciate, but the white landscape made the yellow of the main building and the almost Pompeian red of the stables stand out even more.

 Rundale Side Facade

Stables facing the main entrance

Approaching the main gate

The Palace has had a very difficult history.  Built over a period of 30 years, starting in 1736 and ending in 1768, with a hiatus of 24 years from 1740 to 1764, it was damaged during World War I -- when it was occupied by the German army -- and the war for Latvian Independence in 1919.  In the years after World War II,  it was used for grain storage and as a gym for local schools -- and judging from photographs from the period it was in very poor shape.  Renovations began during the Soviet period, in 1972; and after Latvia regained independence in 1991 another major effort was begun.  The results are amazing.  A number of important rooms have been restored to look as they would have in the 18th century -- ceiling frescoes have been repaired to look as if nothing had every happened to them; floors have been laid where the original parquet had worn away; and ceramic stoves have been reconstructed to match the few remaining originals.

And the restoration continues.  Even while we were there, a man worked with a tiny paintbrush on the stucco roses decorating the walls of one of the State Rooms.

The State Rooms are impressive, but my favorite were the private rooms of the Duke and Duchess, including the bathrooms with ceramic washbasins and chamber pots!   Most of the art displayed in the rooms is reproduction -- the originals are long gone; some, including a Rembrandt, to museums in other parts of Europe.

Fantastic!  Love it!  Who Lived Here???

The Palace clearly had belonged to very wealthy and powerful people, so I was curious about these Dukes of Courland.  It turns out they have a very long history in the area and go back to the Livonian Order, a branch of the Teutonic Knights, who conducted crusades in this part of the world in the 13th century.  Livonia was an area roughly covering northern Latvia and Southern Estonia that was disputed in the Livonian Wars of the 16th century -- wars that involved everyone in the region: Russians, Swedes, Danish-Norwegians, Polish-Lithuanians, and of course, Livonians.  The wars did not go well for the Livonians, and parts of the old Livonian Confederation were given to a Baltic German nobleman who had been the last Master of the Order of Livonia, Gotthard Kettler.  So he became the first Duke of Courland and Semigallia -- an area stretching from the Daugava river to the Baltic Sea.

His descendants built the Duchy into a prosperous state, with a metal working industry, important ports at Ventspils and Liepaja, and trading relationships with the major powers of the time, Britain, France, the Netherlands, and Portugal.  The Duchy even had colonies in Africa and the West Indies -- turns out Tobago was Courlandish!!  (Couronian?)  Interesting, no?

But even these Dukes didn't build Rundale.  They owned the nearby Jelgava Palace -- so who built Rundale????? It turns out it was a very interesting character, who took over the title of Duke of Courland not by being born into it, but because of his friendships in high places -- one Ernst Johann Biron.  Biron was the son of a groom of the then-Duke of Courland, and he was quite the operator.  Through his sister, who was the favorite of a powerful minister in the Russian court, he ingratiated himself to Anna Ioannovna, a niece of Peter the Great.  By that time, Anna had married the next Duke of Courland -- who promptly died, making her the Duchess of Courland!  What timing....

And then another stroke of luck!  The young Czar -- a second cousin -- died, and Anna became ruler of Russia. She must have really liked Biron, and maybe he was also very clever at managing affairs of state, because she appointed him de facto administrator.  He turned out to be as effective at administration as at managing his enemies, who were dispatched unceremoniously, and gruesomely --(beheadings! the rack! Siberia!)

While administering Russia, and not coincidentally, Biron became richer and richer, and when the Kettler line of the Dukes of Courland became extinct, he was appointed the new ruler of Courland.  So, in 1736, he decided to give himself a summer palace and construction of Rundale began.

Unfortunately for Biron, Anna died a few years later and he fell out of favor, was briefly exiled to Siberia, and then lay low for the next 20 years, until another friendly Russian regent emerged.  He was then able to return to Courland -- and Rundale -- as Duke until he died.  (And this explains the lag time in building the Palace.)

Rundale did not stay in Biron's family.  When Catherine the Great took over Russia, she awarded Rundale to one of her favorites, and the Palace passed into the hands of Russian nobility until World War I.

What about that Biron, eh?

Art Nouveau, Part Deux

Windows, Balconies, and Stairwells

Today, in search of the perfect cafe', we walked in the Quiet Center of Riga -- a neighborhood with a  nice concentration of spectacular Art Nouveau buildings, including some designed by Mikhail Eisenstein, father of Sergei (of Battleship Potemkin fame.)  There are some really beautiful decorations around the doorways, windows, and along the rooflines.  This building is on Alberta iela (street) and is by Eisenstein:

This one is across the way on Alberta iela, also by Eisenstein:

And then another one by Eisenstein around the corner on Strelnieku iela, which now houses the Stockholm School of Economics in Riga:

And finally we found a promising cafe', Sienna, right across the way.  It's very cozy -- decorated with  furniture from the Art Nouveau period -- and looks just like a cafe should look, with sofas, chandeliers, and lots of books and magazines spread all around.  Coffee and tea are served in beautiful porcelain cups, and the desserts are from one of the top restaurants in Riga, Vincents.  We liked it, and we wished we could order more than just dessert (we are on the hunt for the perfect sandwich in Riga, but haven't found it yet... must keep looking....)


Down the street from the Sienna Cafe, at the corner of Alberta and Strelnieku, is the very cool Riga Art Nouveau Museum, housed in the apartment of the architect Konstantin Peksens, who designed the building.  The outside of the building is nice:

But nothing beats the interior stairwell:

Look up!! No.... Wait.... Look down!!!

Rooftops and Doors

Among other things, Riga is famous for its Art Nouveau architecture sprinkled throughout the city.  In the Old Town there are a few nice examples next to much older or much newer buildings -- there is so much to see that sometimes we walk right by and don't realize what's there.  This is right on Livu Square, one of the main -- and more touristy -- squares in Old Town:

I had never really paid attention to it because it's right next to the famous Black Cats House, which all guide books talk about, and which forces you to look up to the rooftop, where a cat is perched on each of the turrets, with its tail ominously in the air:

The story is that the cats were initially turned so that their backsides faced the Merchant Guild Hall across the street, because the man who put up the building was refused membership in the guild ("Ah! Take that!").  Here's the cat again:

But the entrance to the building is even nicer.  Here it is:

Goodbye, Franz!

The Latvian National Museum of Art

The Latvian National Museum of Art is closing down for renovation and will be closed for a couple of years, apparently.  So I did a quick tour to see it before it gets spruced up!  The building, on Krišjāņa Valdemāra, the main street that leads to the Shroud Bridge, is a very nice space and dates to 1905, so it really will benefit from renovation -- there was some pretty evident water damage on the walls.

One of my favorite pieces in the museum was this bronze cast of a horse-drawn sleigh carrying the driver and a man and a  child (a father and daughter?)  I loved the movement of the sleeve of the man's coat trailing from the back of the sleigh and a blanket also waving in the air.  It's beautiful.

I also liked some of the ceramic pieces.  There is a chess set called "The Whites and the Reds," that I thought was pretty interesting.  I couldn't find the description of this, but it's pretty obviously from the period around the Russian revolution.  The king of the Whites has a skull-like face and looks like he's brandishing someone's tibia. And the Queen just looks dissolute.  And look at the poor Pawns....  They're in chains!!!

Now, the Reds....  They look happier.  The King is wearing that nice pink apron -- he's a decent working man.  The Queen is fully-clothed and is carrying flowers, and the Pawns look good:  they've got a scythe, but only because they've been out in the fields scything grain. Yay.

But my favorite ceramic piece was this one:  it's called "Goodbye, Franz."  And it says it all.  Looks like Franz and his buddy have gotten too close to a polar bear.  Goodbye, Franz.

On the second floor of the Museum, there are a couple of nice collections of Latvian artists from the early 1900s and through the early 1930s, with some nice landscapes by Purvitis and a couple of beautiful portraits by Rozentals that recall Art Nouveau.  Then suddenly the collection stops (of course.)

In a separate room there was a really interesting collection of Soviet poster art by an artist named Gustav Klucis, who was a member of the famous Latvian Riflemen -- the expert marksmen who were chosen to guard Lenin.  It looks like propaganda art, but it's really striking -- it uses photomontage and it's so modern looking despite the subject.  And there is sad note to it.  Klucis was arrested in Moscow in 1938 and executed, although his fate wasn't known until 1989.

Mud Baths and Sulphur Springs

The Kemeri Sanatorium and Park

Near Jurmala are the Kemeri forest and the grounds of the Kemeri Sanatorium, opened in 1936 as an elegant resort where people could go get back in shape with special mud baths -- and judging from the photographs of the time in the Jurmala City Museum, fancy dinners in fancy dining rooms!  The original building, which still stands, was designed by one of Latvia's major architects for the time, Ernest Laube.  It was a sanatorium even during the Soviet period, where apparently people would go to treat diseases of the joints, bone, and muscle.  The building is still there, but unfortunately it's closed down, waiting for restoration.  The park around it is very pretty -- snowy paths winding around beech trees and evergreens, and canals crossed by little bridges.  The most interesting part of the whole excursion are the sulphur springs, though.  You can smell them before you see them, and if you can follow your nose you'll find them -- bubbling up in the canals and surrounded by yellowish, reddish, foam -- there's the sulphur spring!

Judging from old postcards, the original sanatorium was surrounded by beautifully landscaped grounds and forest paths.  We saw it in February, so all we could see of the landscape was the snow, the forest, and the really interesting sulphur springs.   The building is waiting for someone to rescue it and turn it back into a great hotel.

Beachwear

The Jurmala City Museum

This is a very cool, very small museum with a permanent exhibition tracing the history of Jurmala as a seaside resort from the 1880s through Soviet times -- great original photographs and even movies, and a fabulous collection of clothes vacationers would have worn in the early part of the 20th century through the seventies.

And the building itself is very interesting.  According to Inese Baranovska, the director of the equally cool Museum of Decorative Arts and Design in Riga's Old Town , the building now housing the Jurmala City Museum was a laundry and dry-cleaning facility in the 1960s.  I don't know how much the renovation changed the building from the outside (the inside is really very nice) but I like the structure a lot -- and the side facing the main street looks a little bit like the prow of a ship.