On the shore of Lake Jugla, this open-air museum brings together historic buildings relocated from across Latvia. Farmsteads, workshops and objects reveal regional approaches to rural work and domestic life, while the museum preserves and interprets their histories.
Guide preview
The first historic building brought to this museum was a barn for drying and threshing grain. The Rizgu rija arrived from the Vestiena area in 1928, before there was a public exhibition to visit. Its wide roof slopes low over storage spaces, while a heated room inside dried grain so it could be threshed. At the Latvian Ethnographic Open-Air Museum, a building is both an object to preserve and a practical answer to how people worked.
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- The museum was founded in 1924 and opened to visitors in 1932.
- The Rizgu grain-drying and threshing barn was moved to the museum in 1928.
- Buildings from Kurzeme, Vidzeme, Zemgale and Latgale are represented in the museum landscape.
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