There are plenty of surprises in Riga, Latvia, but even so, I didn’t see this one coming: what amounts to a display of historical rummage lining the arcades of the cloister at Riga’s Lutheran cathedral.
I had been visiting the 13th-century cathedral, and, as I often do, found my way out into the cloisters, left over from a monastery that shared them for centuries. But rather than the usual assortment of plaques, gravestones and saints, I found a diverse assortment of ancient (and some not-so-ancient) objects, lying about as if waiting to be stored somewhere.
And that may be somewhat the case. Although I can’t document it (yet), the objects ranging from cannons to statues to the wrought-iron gate of a 19th-century apartment house elevator, may belong to the Museum of the History of Riga and Navigation.
What leads me to that speculation is that the museum, whose entrance is near the rear of the cathedral, was built in the 1890s, during a major renovation of the cathedral, on part of the land that had been occupied by the monastery. Although there’s no public entrance to the cloister from the museum, there may be connections through some of the doorways.
There are certainly enough weapons and ammunition to start a small, though antiquated, war…
Plenty of plaques and random statuary are on hand… some of fairly recent vintage.
A cannonball sitting on a carved chest, a lion couchant and a coat of arms…
And more doorways, any one of which may or may not lead to the museum…
I’m still looking for the answer…
In later blogs, we’ll visit both the cathedral and the museum.
