Riga's Art Nouveau is what architects come for, the buildings that Mikhail Eisenstein (father of the filmmaker) and others designed when the style swept Europe and Riga embraced it thoroughly. The facades along Alberta Street where dragons and faces and geometric forms compete for attention, the density of Art Nouveau that no other city matches.

The Art Nouveau makes Riga essential for anyone interested in the movement, the outdoor museum that walking the streets provides. The Art Nouveau is what distinguishes Riga from cities whose architecture is merely old.

Riga's Old Town is what Hanseatic trade built, the medieval streets and churches and merchants' houses that UNESCO protects. The Three Brothers that are Riga's oldest residences, the Blackheads House that reconstruction restored, the cathedral whose organ Bach would have envied - the old town is what preceded the Art Nouveau and what tourism also celebrates.

The old town provides the medieval atmosphere that Baltic capitals share, the contrast with Art Nouveau that makes Riga architecturally varied. The old town is foundation; the Art Nouveau is flourish.

The Central Market is Europe's largest, the five Zeppelin hangars that German military built and that independent Latvia converted to market pavilions. The market where fish and meat and dairy and produce fill halls that industrial architecture made, the market that serves Rigans daily and tourists who want authenticity.

The market demonstrates Riga's pragmatism - the reuse of military infrastructure, the commerce that scale enables, the daily life that continues regardless of tourism. The market is where Riga feeds itself.

The Freedom Monument is Latvia's symbol, the statue that Soviet occupation couldn't remove because Stalin decided it represented liberation from capitalism, that flowers now surround and that guards now protect. The monument that Latvians maintained through occupation as assertion of identity.

The monument represents what independence means for nations that lost it and regained it, the symbol that survived when the nation that erected it couldn't govern itself. The monument is Latvia's statement of existence.

The Daugava River is what made Riga strategic, the waterway that connected interior to Baltic and that trade routes followed. The river that divides Riga, that bridges connect, that views from the old town include - the river is why Riga exists where it does.

The river provides the transport that made Riga important before railways, the geography that commerce required. The river is Riga's origin; the city that grew is consequence.