Riga
One-third of Latvia lives here. Hanseatic League (1282), German merchants until 1918, independence declared November 18. Europe's finest Art Nouveau collection (300+ buildings).
Riga contains one-third of Latvia's population—591,882 people in the city, 847,162 in the metro area. This dominance isn't new. When Bishop Albert founded the city in 1201, he positioned it at the Daugava's mouth on a trade route that connected Vikings to Byzantium.
By 1282, Riga had joined the Hanseatic League. It became the third-largest commercial center on the Baltic after Lübeck and Gdańsk, prospering as an intermediary between Western and Eastern Europe. The German hegemony lasted until 1918, when Latvia declared independence from this very city on November 18.
The architectural evidence of German dominance survives in Jugendstil. Riga has Europe's finest Art Nouveau collection—over 300 buildings in the Historic Centre, earning the nickname "Paris of the East." The medieval core, UNESCO World Heritage since 1997, clusters on the Daugava's right bank with a skyline punctuated by church spires.
Riga is a primate city: it dominates Latvia's economy, culture, and population to a degree unusual even for small countries. By 2026, the challenge is whether this primacy strengthens Latvia through concentration or weakens it through depopulation of everywhere else.