Here Is the Church, and Here Is the Steeple....

The Churches of Old Town

This is the classic view of Riga's Old Town from the Daugava River:

All these spires, belfries, and steeples....  Riga seems like a very secular city, and yet there are churches, it seems, around every corner of Old Town --  Riga's Doms, St. Peter's, St. James's (also known as St. Jacob's), Our Lady of Sorrows, St. Saviour's. And they represent different denominations -- Lutheran, Roman Catholic, and Anglican.  In some cases, the same church even changed denominations during the years -- going from Catholic to Lutheran, or Catholic to Russian Orthodox, and then back to Catholic.  And during Soviet times some of the churches took on other roles -- in the case of St. Saviour's, the Anglican Church, becoming a student club.

In the first few months of walking around Old Town -- and getting lost in the winding streets -- I had trouble finding and recognizing the different churches, so I decided to figure out once and for all which spire belongs to which church and what is unique about each.

Riga's Doms Church

Riga's Doms is the city's Lutheran Cathedral, having become Protestant after the Reformation.  (Doms comes from an archaic form of the German word for Cathedral.)  It is possibly the easiest to find of the churches in Old Town, since it sits in the largest open space in Old Town, the Doma Laukums (Cathedral Square) and, as I discovered while lost, most of the wider streets lead there.  This is the view of the tower, the steeple, and the spire of the Cathedral from the very interesting cloister attached to the church.

And here is the view from the Square:

And here is another view, from the tower of St. Peter's Church:

The original church was built in the 13th century, but its shape kept changing in the intervening centuries as a result of expansions, damage from fire, and structural improvements.  The appearance of the tower changed also.  It is now described as baroque, and dates to the 18th century.

The major attraction of the Cathedral is its organ, which is one of the largest and most famous in the world.  The original organ was installed in the 17th century and at the time was the largest musical instrument in existence.  The current organ dates from 1884 and is still used for concerts.

Although most of the Cathedral's stained glass windows were destroyed in World War II, some remain and tell a little bit of the history of Riga.  Here is Walter von Plettenberg, Master of the Livonian Order, declaring freedom of religion in Riga in 1525, thus allowing citizens to profess the Lutheran faith:

The pulpit of the church is also very interesting and dates from 1641, with some additions and renovations in the 19th century:

And I loved this door, tucked away to the right of the altar:

Another interesting feature of the Cathedral is the cloister, which dates to the original days of the church, when monks lived in a then-adjacent monastery.

It now houses all sorts of interesting archeological finds, not just from the Cathedral grounds but from elsewhere in the city, including, strangely, the stone used by the town's executioner for his... ugh... work:

St. Peter's Church

The tallest steeple in Old Town Riga belongs to another Lutheran church, that of St. Peter.  This is really distinctive because of a three-tiered belfry:

From the side, St. Peter's looks a little like the Doms Church:

But the facade, with its three arched doors, sets it apart:  

St. Peter's is one of the oldest churches in the Baltic.  A wooden church was built here in 1209, but the current church was started in 1406 and expanded during the 16th century.  By 1690, St. Peter's had the tallest steeple in Europe.  When it burned down in the 18th century after a lightening strike, Tsar Peter the Great, who was visiting Riga, ordered it rebuilt.  It survived until World War II, when it, together with much of the church, was destroyed by mortar fire.  A series of photographs inside the church document the destruction that took place in 1941.  They are dramatic -- and really convey the horror people must have felt in seeing this historic building burn down.

The current steeple dates to 1973, when a 10-year reconstruction project was completed.  It is now possible to ride an elevator to the top for some amazing views of the city -- including all the other (lower) steeples!

St. James's Cathedral, St. Mary Magdalene, Our Lady of Sorrows

St. James's is the Roman Catholic Cathedral of Riga, and is also known as St. Jacob's in guidebooks, since in Latvian the two names translate the same.  It has a distinctive green steeple that juts out of a red brick tower:

And here it is in the distance, seen from the top of St. Peter's, together with Riga's Doms:

This church seems to have changed hands more than any other.  It started out in 1225 as a Catholic church, but became Lutheran after the Reformation.  During the Counter-Reformation it became Catholic again, and was run by the Jesuit order -- only to return to the Protestants in the first half of the 17th century, during the Swedish occupation of Riga.  Finally, in 1923 a referendum handed it back to the Catholic Church.

Clustered around St. James's are two additional Catholic churches, St. Mary Magdalene, whose steeple is just in front of St. James's in the photo below:

 and Our Lady of Sorrows Church, just down the street from the Riga Castle (and Presidential Palace):

Of the three, my favorite is St. Mary Magdalene.  Small and beautifully decorated -- with a colorful  design on the ceiling -- it was built in the 13th century for Cistercian nuns cloistered nearby.  It also changed hands a number of times, and became a Russian Orthodox church in the early 1700s until 1923, when it reverted to the Catholic Church.  Maybe the Russian Orthodox influence is responsible for the rounded base of the steeple, as well as the side turret, and the door overhang below:

 

St. Saviour's Church

The last in my tour of churches is the Anglican St. Saviour's church, built in 1859 for the British traders who lived in Riga and the sailors who would visit the port.  It sits right at the edge of Old Town, facing the Daugava -- a convenient location for those coming from the port.

During the Soviet period St. Saviour housed the student club of the nearby Riga Polytechnic Institute and dances were held here.  Some of the renovations date to this period, including this stained glass window, whose modern design replaces the original destroyed during the war: