Alternative Riga Tour

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Basic Information
Total time
2 h 30 min
Price
„Pay what you wish” tours do not have a fixed price. It is up to you to evaluate your guide’s work and reward it. Some people give 10€, others 50€ depending on their satisfaction and abilities.
Meeting point
In front of St. Peter's Church. Look for a tour guide with yellow colours.Go to map
This tour is provided by our partner

About

Join us to explore what lies beyond the old city and the touristic centre of Riga with its famous art nouveau buildings. Head towards the areas occupied mostly by the locals to discover how they live and carry on with their daily lives.


The centerpoint of this tour will be the massive Central Market – a paradise for all the foodies out there, a place to buy all kinds of local delicacies from smoked fish, cheeses, fruit (berries!) and other snacks. But it is not just that! The market is oddly located in the five old WWI Zeppelin hangars. Right next to it lies the Warehouse district with its revitalized brick, functional architecture which today is full of hip cafés, shops and galleries. With nice green areas, open air cinemas and a pleasant promenade along the Daugava river, it makes it Riga’s most favourite relaxing zone. If once there were workshops here there must also be an area where the working class lived. And that’s where we will head next. The so-called Moscow district is a strange mix of 19th century wooden houses, neglected 20th century Art Nouveau buildings and soviet style housing projects. If this wasn’t enough you can also find there churches and temples of all the people who once lived there: from Russians, Latvians and Jews up to Old Believers, a sect of Russian Orthodox Church. A great testimony to how cosmopolitan Riga once was!


Join us on this legendary tour to discover Riga’s past, present and perhaps future as well! 


See and learn about:



  • Stalin’s birthday cake – the most famous skyscraper in the city 

  • Zeppelin construction halls turned into a dream of all foodies

  • former ghetto area

  • The Warehouse district

  • The most communist and non-communist (at the same time!) statue in the city – the Freedom Monument

  • …and much more!


Meeting Point
In front of St. Peter's Church. Look for a tour guide with yellow colours.

BOOKING RULES
Walkative! free tours are designed for individual travelers and small groups. In the best interest of our visitors we aim to keep our free tours relatively small. Hence, we cannot accept parties of more than 8 people on our regular free tours and guides have the right to deny participation to such groups. If you travel in a party of 8 or more please book a Private Tour. For more information please contact us.


Terrible guide

Rated 2.0 out of 5
7 months ago

It was the worst walkative experience I had. The route was very good and it included interesting and beautiful points, but the guide was terrible. We had a brunette girl, Liga (?) was her name, I think. She claimed to have a journalist education and to be previously a guide in several Riga’s museums, which I find unlikely based on the quality of her storytelling. She was only giving us historical information that can be found in Wikipedia after 3 minutes search. For example, the only relevant facts she gave about the building of Latvian Academy of Science were: “it was a gift from Stalin” (sic!) and “now it contains the main office of the Academy of Science”. She even failed to answer simple questions about how the Zeppelin hangars worked and why exactly were they build in Riga. Her explanation after not being able to give an answer was that “military strategy is not her field”, which is completely beyond the point. Summarizing she seems like someone who just half-heartedly learned the scriptbook about this trip. One good thing was that she was giving many details about present economy, and situation of Latvians. So if you ever encounter her on a trip, just quit to be honest, you will save a lot of time.

Artur

Great tour

Rated 5.0 out of 5
8 months ago

I did the free alternative walking tour with Jaspar. He had great knowledge and good charisma. Would recommend to a friend.

Seb

Must do when in Riga

Rated 5.0 out of 5
9 months ago

Kaspar was an amazing tour guide, both knowledgable and funny. He managed to teach us a lot about Riga’s history in the most entertaining way possible, was not boring at any time. Great guy with perfect English.

Agata

Highly recommended!

Rated 5.0 out of 5
10 months ago

We did the tour in a small group with Kaspar, who gave us some really informative and personal insights to the city of Riga. History of the city, Local food,an architecture were the main topics here.

Tamino


This tour is also available as
a Private Tour.

Private tour
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