Riga of Spies｜Latvia

Do you love mysteries, enigmas, detective stories, and thrillers? Is history your passion? The ‘Riga of Spies’ tour is designed for you.
The tour starts at the Freedom Monument and finishes at Lido-Vermanitis restaurant.
During this approximately 3-hour tour, you will travel through the streets, courtyards, and cellars of the Old Town to the elegant embassy quarter, the exquisite Art Nouveau architecture of Alberta Street, and the brown-grey KGB building. The guide will show you the sights and tell stories about:
1) Great Northern War, how a Latvian spied for Sweden against Russians before the Battle of Narva.
2) Rituals of Riga's XVIII-century Freemasonry.
3) Spying for economic reasons—the unknown story of Riga Black Balsam (1780s).
4) Police of the tsars against Russian revolutionaries—police trackers, anarchists, Bolsheviks, and terrorist attacks.
5) The duel of German and Russian secret services in and around Riga during World War I.
6) Who killed Soviet diplomatic courier comrade Theodor Nette?
7) Latvian secret services and subversive activities of Tcheka/NKVD.
8) Abwehr (German military intelligence) in Latvia.
9) James Bonds from British MI6 against the KGB.
10) Riga and Mitrokhin archives.

You will see:
- Swedish Gates and Riga Old Town.
- Houses of Freemasonry.
- Powder Tower.
- Riga Black Balsam (legendary drink) café and cellar.
- The office of Smersh (Soviet counter espionage intelligence) near Riga's Great Guild.
- Where Sherlock Holmes from the Soviet TV series of the late 1970s resided in Riga's Old Town.
- Office of Abwehr in Riga.
- Russian, Swedish, and British embassies.
- Art Nouveau Quarter—the brothel for Russian officers where the German spies were arrested in 1916.
- KGB building.
- The tour finishes at a popular restaurant, where tourists can enjoy beer and delicious, inexpensive meals in the traditional atmosphere of a Latvian inn from the good old days.
The guide has academic degrees of Mg.hist. and Dr. Theol, the tour is strictly based on archival sources and scientific literature.