Museum of the Occupation of Latvia
History of Latvia's Soviet and Nazi occupations, 1940–1991, in a rebuilt black block by the Daugava.
Founded in 1993, the museum records the fifty-one years in which Latvia was occupied by the Soviet Union, then by Nazi Germany, and again by the Soviet Union until independence was restored in 1991. Its collection runs to some 60,000 registered items together with more than 2,300 recorded video testimonies from deportees, refugees and others caught up in the period. Displays follow occupation, mass deportation, resistance and exile, with reconstructed spaces including a barrack hut from a Gulag camp.
The building on Latviešu strēlnieku laukums, a dark windowless block raised in 1971 as a Soviet memorial museum, was reworked between 2018 and 2022 to a design by the Latvian-American architect Gunnar Birkerts called the House of the Future, adding a light-filled upper volume, new galleries and a memorial room. It reopened on 1 June 2022. A second site, the Corner House on Brīvības iela, preserves the former KGB headquarters with its cells and interrogation rooms.
Highlights
- Reconstructed barrack hut from a Soviet Gulag camp
- Over 2,300 recorded video testimonies from those deported or exiled
- Gunnar Birkerts's House of the Future extension, opened 2022
- Corner House branch in the former KGB headquarters
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