The eldest brother
Gothic of 1490 with stone benches at its door.
Martin Thirolf — CC BY-SA 2.0 de · Diego Delso — CC BY-SA 3.0 · Diego Delso — CC BY-SA 3.0 · Davisbarbars — CC BY-SA 4.0
Three joined fifteenth-century merchant houses in Tallinn, similar in idea and form — the two cities cross-reference them as a Hanseatic pairing.
Sign in to write your review of this place.
No reviews yet — be the first.
Three joined houses that condense five centuries of domestic architecture: the Three Brothers on Mazā Pils street are the oldest surviving group of dwellings in Latvia, each from a different century, so the evolution of the Riga house reads across one frontage. The eldest (number 17, about 1490) is narrow Gothic with small windows, stone benches at the door and a hoist beam for goods — a merchant's house storing wares in the attic. The middle one (number 19, 1646) is wider with a Dutch-derived facade and larger windows, because tax was no longer levied on window width. The youngest (number 21, late seventeenth century) is narrower and plainer, squeezed into what space remained. The inner courtyard is open to walk through, and one of them holds the Latvian Museum of Architecture. The street is among the old town's quietest, and it answers Tallinn's Three Sisters — a well-known pairing between the two cities.
Gothic of 1490 with stone benches at its door.
Why the middle brother's windows grew.
Mazā Pils iela 17-21, Riga