In the capital city of Riga, Lativa

 The House of the Blackheads is a building in the Old Town of Riga, Latvia. The original building was erected during the first third of the 14th century for the Brotherhood of Blackheads, a guild for unmarried merchants, shipowners, and foreigners in Riga.

=====================================================================
(in Latvia, on the Daugava River, above its mouth on the Gulf of Riga.) The Gothic spires that dominate Rīga's cityscape might suggest austerity, but it is the flamboyant art nouveau that forms the flesh and the spirit of this city, the largest of all three Baltic capitals.

+ An ancient settlement of the Livs and Kurs, Riga, the capital city of Latvia, emerged as a trading post in the late 12th century. Seagoing ships found a natural harbor where the Ridzene River once flowed into the Daugava, a trade route to points east and south from the Viking Age onward. Albert of Buxhoevden arrived in 1199 with 23 ships of Crusaders and established the military Order of the Brothers of the Sword (reorganized in 1237 as the Livonian Order, a branch of the Teutonic Order). The city of Riga joined the Hanseatic League in 1282 and became the dominant center of trade on the Baltic Sea’s eastern shore.

+ Riga was briefly an independent city-state but passed to Poland in 1581. It was captured by Sweden in 1621 and then taken in 1709–10 by Peter the Great, with Sweden formally ceding the city to Russia by the Peace of Nystad in 1721. Riga’s German-speaking nobles and merchants retained local privileges under all of the above monarchies.

+ On the eve of World War I, Riga was the Russian Empire’s third largest city, From 1915 to 1917, however, one of the war’s front lines lay along the Daugava, resulting in heavy damage on both shores. Latvia’s independence was declared in Riga in November, 1918 -- and the city became the new republic’s capital.

+ Latvia was occupied and annexed by the Soviets in 1940, and Riga lost thousands of people in 1940–41. Nazi Germany occupied the city from 1941 to 1944 during World War II, making it the administrative capital of Ostland, a territory encompassing Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Belarus. Thousands of the city’s Jews were imprisoned in the Riga ghetto, shot in the Rumbula forest, and buried in mass graves near the end of 1941. The Soviets returned in October 1944, and for the next four decades Riga was the Soviet Baltic Military District’s command post. Latvia declared renewed independence in 1990.

+ The historic center of Riga was designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1997. Many medieval buildings survive, among them the 13th-century Riga cathedral, the Riga Castle, and merchants’ homes and warehouses. The canal around the city’s Old Town was the fortress moat. Among the public buildings that were renovated in the 1990s was the National Opera, first built as the Riga German Theater in 1863.
+ Shown here is the 14th-century House of Blackheads; damaged during World WarII and razed in 1954 (it was rebuilt in 2000).