Latvia travel tips

6 guides in Latvia — when to go, how to get around, which ATMs not to use, and what a fair price looks like.

The Freedom Monument and the Art Nouveau streets of Riga from above

RigaLatviaThe biggest Art Nouveau city in the world with a Hanseatic old town inside it, a market in five zeppelin hangars, and a beach twenty minutes away by train

The flat Baltic shore at Jūrmala, sea, reeds and a line of forest

JūrmalaLatviaThirty kilometres of white sand under pines, wooden villas from the tsars’ time, and Riga half an hour away by train

Turaida castle’s red-brick tower among the forest of the Gauja valley

SiguldaLatviaThe Gauja valley: three castles, a cable car across the river, a bobsleigh track you can ride, caves with medieval graffiti and the country’s autumn colour

The old brick bridge across the Venta at Kuldīga

KuldīgaLatviaA small town of wooden houses on the widest waterfall in Europe, where the fish jump the falls in spring and the brick bridge is the longest of its kind

The tower of Cēsis castle with its orange roof above the forest

CēsisLatviaThe prettiest small town in Latvia: a Livonian castle you explore by lantern, a medieval centre, a beer brewed since 1590 and the Gauja forest around it

Concrete of the Northern Forts at Karosta, Liepāja, with a wind turbine behind

LiepājaLatviaThe city where the wind is born: a long white beach, a Soviet naval base you can sleep in the prison of, Art Nouveau streets and the country’s rock music