The forest park and suburb, Mezaparks, is a great place to spend a day.
Mezaparks is one of the nicest suburbs in Riga. Created in beginning of the last century, it is located next to a lake and a forest and consists of mostly summer cottages, private houses and villas. In Mežaparks you can find marvellous examples of eclectic, neoclassic, art nouveau,functionalism and art Deco architecture as well as a few in the Latvian national romantic style.
- Mezaparks in winter
Mezaparks founder is considered to be the Swedish King Gustav II who, in 1621, built a camp for his army at the current territory. At that time it was called Kaiserwald what means King’s forest.
By the end of 19th century Riga was overpopulated and it was decided to develop Kaiserwald into a cottage district and to build a public park around the Ķīšezers lake. The first houses were built in 1902 and only in 5 years the total lengths of the streets was 20 km. Mainly wealthy Germans choose to live in Mezaparks, but there were also Latvian and Swedish residents.
After 1939. many Germans left Latvia, thus the majority of the houses were empty when the Red Army occupied Latvia. Except for a few houses where some higher ranked politicians lived, most of these houses were now occupied by a number of families living in poor conditions. As a result Mezaparks’ houses were in terrible shape following the end of Soviet occupation.
In 1912, in the public park next to the lake, Riga’s Zoo was opened. During Soviet times a culture and recreation park, complete with outdoor theatre, open air stage for the song and dance festival, movie theatre, boat dock, children’s town, cafés and restaurants, was developed in the park. All the attractions were connected with paved footpaths.
Today many of the houses have been repaired to their former glory. Mežaparks is now a great place to spend the day walking around, riding a bike or roller-skating, skiing in winter, having a picnic by the lake on a warm summer’s day or going to the Zoo with the kids. You can get to Mezaparks by catching tram number 11 from the city centre.
