Partners About Us Contacts Useful LinksRSS Sitemap

© anothertravelguide.com 2008
Anothertravelguide.com is an internet resource for independent travellers. All addresses listed on anothertravelguide.com - hotels, restaurants, shops, etc. have been tested and evaluated by our authors.
No hotel, restaurant or spa has paid (nor does pay) for being listed or reviewed at the anothertravelguide.com. All opinions are subjective and anothertravelguide.com takes no responsibility if any of these locations don't live up to your personal expectations, taste or mood, or has undergone serious changes since visited by authors and experts of anothertravelguide.com.

Icons

Already at daybreak on Albert Street - Alberta iela - in the elegant residential neighbourhood known as the Quiet Centre (klusais centrs), you can find clusters of people staring up in wonder at the fancy façades of the finest Art Nouveau buildings in the city. Stylized flora, fauna and human figures have looked down at the townsfolk for more than a century and are today one of Riga's trademarks. The city's sole sphinx lies in wait on this street.

The author of some of these fancifully garnished buildings and the vast apartments within (which were chopped up into komunalkas under the Soviets; that particular manner of communal life can only be truly understood by those who lived under capital "S" Socialism) was the engineer and architect Mikhail Eisenstein (1867-1921), known somewhat derisively as the "crazy cake baker" during his lifetime.

A pedantic workaholic with a complex personality - something of a tyrant - the elder Eisenstein became known for his focus on exterior detail. In commencing a project, he would first produce a draft of the façade, not forgetting a single figure, ornament or decoration, and only then turn to the interior

His son Sergei (1898-1948), who shook the world with his film The Battleship Potemkin, was raised in a Riga that was then a cosmopolitan, urban centre of the Russian Empire. It was here that the talented boy read voraciously in German, Russian and French, drew pictures and strove to understand the world. It was here that he studied only a few hundred metres away in the Realschule that is now Riga's Second Secondary School. Sergei left his hometown in 1915, departing to study architecture in St. Petersburg, where fate turned him into a great reformer of the cinema.

The relations between the elder and younger Eisenstein reflect a classic, generational conflict. The son Sergei mocked his father's pedantry, the stateliness of his architecture, and couldn't forgive the loneliness he suffered in childhood (atypically for the era, his parents were divorced). The father Mikhail did not share his son's enthusiasm for the Revolution. At Krišjāņa Valdemāra iela 6, there is now a scanty plaque that reads: "Soviet filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein lived here from 1889 to 1915."

The most notable of Mikhail Eisenstein's buildings are at Elizabetes iela 10b and Alberta iela 4, 6, 8 and 13.

Keywords: icon, Riga

Your comments

Read the latest posts in
Destinations

Follow us:

We are passionate about travelling. It’s a great way to challenge and provoke yourself, and an even better way to see, feel, discover, enjoy and taste. Travelling provides a unique frame for your emotions and the sensations, flavours and pleasures you encounter. It’s impossible to keep them to yourself, and probably the best investment you will ever make. That is why we have created anothertravelguide.com. We share the value of our travel experiences and discoveries with our friends, so, if you share our passion, please join us!

Una Meistere and Andrejs Žagars