Great Cemetery

Established in 1773 in a location that was at the time outside Riga’s city limits, the multidenominational Great Cemetery (Lielie kapi) was once the city’s most prestigious burial ground. Members of the aristocracy, political leaders, religious leaders, business leaders, performers, artists, architects, and even a Nobel Prize laureate were buried in the cemetery.

Wealthy people funded the construction of elaborate grave markers and mausoleums to inter their loved ones. A Protestant and an Orthodox church were built in the cemetery, and the cemetery later underwent additional landscaping, making it a truly lavish site.

However, the history of the cemetery changed dramatically after Latvia was incorporated into the Soviet Union following World War II. The communist government took a hostile attitude towards the cemetery in part because of its religious aspect and in part because of the Protestants being (falsely) associated with German fascism.

The cemetery was partially closed in 1953 and then fully closed in 1969. Soon after this, Senču Street (Senču iela) was built across the cemetery, separating the Catholic section (now known as St. Jacob’s Cemetery or Jēkaba kapi) and the Orthodox section (now known as Pokrov Cemetery or Pokrova kapi) from the larger Protestant section. Looting and vandalism in the subsequent decades led to the damage and destruction of the monuments and structures within the cemetery, particularly in the Protestant and Catholic sections.

However, a few of the monuments and mausoleums, as well the churches, have survived, and the location has been designated an architectural landmark of state importance. Pokrov Cemetery began accepting burials again in 1991 and has been kept in a maintained state since then. The other parts of the Great Cemetery today are a rather serene, almost fantasy-like park with multitudes of tall trees and carpets of green shrubby plants interspersed with old monuments and mausoleums standing sometimes by themselves or sometimes in clusters, providing hints of the cemetery’s former grandeur.