Riga

Riga - darkometer rating : 5 - The capital of Latvia and largest city in the Baltics. It also offers a wider range of attractions to visitors than the other two Baltic capitals ( Vilnius and Tallinn ), and that includes an astonishing number of sites relevant to the dark tourism as well. Beyond that, I found Riga to also be one of the most pleasant cities in Europe overall. > More background info > What there is to see > Location > Access and costs > Time required > Combinations with other dark destinations > Combinations with non-dark destinations > Photos More background info: Like Tallinn , Riga was one of the major cities of the Hanseatic League from the 13th century onwards. Later it was for long periods part of first Sweden and then the Russian empire (and later still the USSR ). Yet, as a legacy of the Hanseatic ties, Riga had a large German population and even used German as the official language until the late 19th century. The late 19th and early 20th centuries saw Riga booming and expanding like at no other time in its history. It was also that period that brought the style of art nouveau, Jugendstil, to the city where it flourished like in few other places. After a brief occupation by Germany during WWI , Latvia became an independent state and Riga its natural capital in the inter-war period. This independence was brought to an abrupt end through the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact between Hitler and Stalin , on the basis of which the Soviet Union swallowed up the Baltics and eastern parts of Poland . And then Nazi Germany broke the agreement by invading further eastwards ... bringing death and destruction not only to the east of Poland, as well as to Belarus , Ukraine and Russia , but also to the Baltics.