Architecture

House of the Great Guild

Riga, Latvia

House of the Great Guild — location photo

Riga’s Great Guild is a Gothic Revival guild house incorporating older meeting rooms. Once associated with merchants and later used for concerts, it has been repeatedly adapted after fire and changing civic needs.

Guide preview

Riga’s Great Guild looks like a nineteenth-century Gothic Revival building, yet it contains rooms from an earlier guild house. The contrast between its exterior and older spaces tells a long story of merchants gathering, a city making music and a building repeatedly changed to meet new needs.

Continue exploring

Discover the full story

Keep reading with a travel pass and explore every full guide and tour.

Upgrade

Quick facts

  • The Great Guild was associated with Riga’s merchants and was also known as the Guild of St. Mary.
  • The nineteenth-century building incorporates the older Minster Room and former Bride’s Chamber.
  • A serious fire damaged the building in 1963, and it was reconstructed for concert use.

More places in Riga

architecture

Riga, LatviaGuide with pass

10b Elizabetes Street

Elizabetes iela 10b is a 1903 Riga apartment building designed by Mikhail Eisenstein. Its blue upper façade, enormous sculpted faces and ornamental patterns show how published European design ideas were adapted into a distinctive Art Nouveau street front.

landmark

Riga, LatviaGuide with pass

11 November Embankment

Riga’s 11 November Embankment follows the right bank of the Daugava beside Old Riga, combining a busy riverside route with a long history of trade and public gatherings.

museum

Riga, LatviaGuide with pass

1991 Barricades Museum

The 1991 Barricades Museum preserves objects, photographs and testimony from Latvia’s independence struggle. In Old Riga, its collection traces the volunteers who defended important sites and remembers those killed or injured during the January and August events.

architecture

Riga, LatviaGuide with pass

4a Strēlnieku Street

The richly ornamented 1905 design at Strēlnieku iela 4a is associated with architect Mikhail Eisenstein. Originally combining a school and residences, it later housed a dormitory and now serves the Stockholm School of Economics in Riga.

landmark

Riga, LatviaGuide with pass

AB Jetty

AB Jetty extends from the left bank of the Daugava in Riga, offering a walking route and views across the river towards the towers of the Old Town.

market

Riga, LatviaGuide with pass

Āgenskalns Market

Āgenskalns Market is a neighbourhood food market on Riga’s left bank, centred on a red-brick hall designed by Reinhold Georg Schmaeling. Established at this site in 1898, it reopened its restored pavilion in 2022 with food sellers, cafés and community activities.