The Three Brothers (Trīs brāļi): Riga’s Oldest Houses

Three buildings, three centuries, one short stretch of Mazā Pils iela. Click any image for the full-size view.

Short answer, what the Three Brothers are

The Three Brothers (in Latvian, Trīs brāļi) are three medieval-to-baroque dwelling houses standing side by side at Mazā Pils iela 17, 19, and 21, in the western half of Riga’s Old Town. Each one is from a different century. Together they are the only surviving cluster of pre-industrial private houses in Riga, and number 17 in particular is the oldest stone dwelling house in the city.

Quick facts before the rest:

• Number 17 — late Gothic, around 1490. White stepped gable, the oldest. Stone, two storeys plus attic.
• Number 19 — built in 1646 (date carved on the facade). Dutch Mannerist / early baroque. Yellow with stone window-surrounds. Currently houses the Latvian Museum of Architecture.
• Number 21 — late 17th century / early 18th. Baroque. Grey-green facade, narrower than the others.
• Free to view from outside; the museum inside number 19 has a small entry fee.
• Five-minute walk from Riga Cathedral; ten from the Freedom Monument.

If you are walking the Old Town and you have only one minute on Mazā Pils iela, stand opposite number 17 and look at the three of them as a row. That’s the famous view. The rest of this is what you’re actually looking at, and why each one is different.

Number 17 — the oldest stone dwelling in Riga

Number 17 is the white house on the right as you face the row from across the street. The stepped gable, the round-headed niches, the small windows in the upper storey: all late Gothic, all from a building completed somewhere around 1490. There’s some debate about the exact date (Latvian architectural historians put it between 1480 and 1500, depending on which timber-and-mortar samples they trust), but the consensus is that this is the oldest surviving stone-built dwelling house in Riga. Older than the New World. Older than the Reformation. Older than the printing press, by a hair.

The two interesting features to look for, up close. First, the door. The arched brick portal itself is original, even if the heavy timber doors hung in it now are 19th-century replacements. Look at the small carved stone set into the wall to the right of the door: that’s a guardian carving, the medieval equivalent of a saint’s niche, defaced during the Reformation in 1524 like most of its siblings. Second, the niches in the upper facade. Those small recessed bays were originally for storage shutters — a medieval town-house combined dwelling, warehouse, and shop in one structure, and the upper niches held grain and dry goods. The shutters are gone; the niches remain.

One small Riga thing about number 17. The street level here, like at the cathedral five minutes away, is roughly two metres higher than it was in 1490. The original ground-floor windows are now half-buried below the cobblestones. What you’re seeing is an upper part of an originally taller building, slowly drowning in the rising city.

Number 19, the dated middle brother

Number 19 is the yellow one in the middle, and it has a date carved on its facade you can read from the street: 1646. The full inscription above the door reads SOLI DEO GLORIA (Latin: ‘to God alone be the glory’), and the architectural style is Dutch Mannerism, early baroque, with stone surrounds around the windows that the late-Gothic number 17 next door entirely lacks. By 1646 Riga was a Hanseatic merchant city under Swedish administration; the merchant who built this house was reaching for the architectural fashion of Amsterdam, not the modest stone of medieval Livonia.

Number 19 is also the one that is open to the public. Since 1972 it has housed the Latvian Museum of Architecture (Latvijas Arhitektūras muzejs), one of the smaller and quieter Riga museums. Entry is around €3, opening hours are roughly Tuesday to Friday 09:00–17:00 (shorter on Saturdays, closed Sundays and Mondays). It’s a niche museum (architectural drawings, models, building fragments) and probably not worth your time if you’re only here for two days. It’s very worth your time if you’re an architect, an architecture student, or someone whose idea of a good afternoon includes looking at hand-drawn plans of timber farmhouses. The building itself is the most interesting exhibit; the courtyard behind it is open and free, and the rear elevations show how a 17th-century Riga merchant house actually worked.

Number 21: youngest of the three

Number 21 is the grey-green one on the left as you face the row, and is the youngest of the three. Late 17th or early 18th century, baroque, narrower than the other two. The doorway is plainer; the windows have simpler stone surrounds; the gable is taller and steeper. This was the small house in the row when it was built. The plot it sits on is narrower than its older neighbours, because by 1700 Riga was densely built and the easy plots had been taken.

Look at the door knocker on number 21 if you stop in front of it. The metalwork (most of it 19th-century replacement, but in the original style) carries the merchant’s mark of the family that owned the house in the 1700s. Riga merchant houses were identified by their house-mark before street numbers existed; some of those marks survive on doorframes around the Old Town if you know where to look.

Mazā Pils iela — the lane itself

The Three Brothers are the headline, but the rest of Mazā Pils iela is worth twenty minutes too. The street runs roughly north from Riga Castle down to the cathedral quarter, and is one of the best-preserved short streets in the medieval Old Town. The cobblestones are uneven (mind your ankles); the buildings on either side are mostly 18th-century, with a few 17th-century survivors mixed in; and the lane is properly quiet most of the day, even in summer.

What I tell visitors: come here at 8:00 in the morning. The street is empty. The light is at a low angle and bouncing off the wet cobbles. The cafés haven’t opened. You can stand opposite the Three Brothers and have the view to yourself for ten minutes, easily, and the photographs are better than the ones you’ll take in the middle of the day. By 11 the day-trip groups arrive, the lane fills up, and you’ll be queuing for the angle. Early is the answer.

If you’re here in the late afternoon instead, walk up Mazā Pils to the Castle and back the other way. That gives you the row of houses with the cathedral spire visible above the rooftops to the south, the photograph you’ll see on a lot of Riga postcards. Then drop into one of the small cafés on the parallel street (Pils iela) for coffee.

Practical answers

Where they are and how to find them

Mazā Pils iela 17, 19, 21, in the western half of Riga’s Old Town, between the cathedral quarter and Riga Castle. From Riga Cathedral, walk north on Pils iela for two minutes, then turn right onto Mazā Pils. You’ll see the row immediately. From the Freedom Monument, ten minutes through the Old Town. There’s no transport that drops you closer; the Old Town is largely pedestrianised and you’ll arrive on foot.

Hours, costs, and what’s actually open

The exterior is free and open 24/7. The houses are on a public street. The Latvian Museum of Architecture inside number 19 is open Tuesday to Friday 09:00–17:00 and Saturday 11:00–17:00 (shorter in winter, closed Sundays and Mondays); entry is around €3 for adults. The courtyard behind number 19 is free and accessible during museum hours.

Combining the Three Brothers with the rest of the Old Town

The Three Brothers slot naturally into the western half of an Old Town walk. From here, three minutes north is Riga Castle; five minutes south-east is Riga Cathedral; ten minutes south is the House of the Blackheads. The full circuit is in the Old Town pillar guide. If you’re short on time and have to choose: the Three Brothers, the cathedral, and the climb up St Peter’s tower are the three sights I’d not skip.

Photography — what works

The standard photograph (all three houses in a row) is taken from the opposite side of Mazā Pils, about ten metres south of number 17. There’s a single spot on the cobbles where the framing of all three is clean; you’ll see it immediately because it’s where everyone else is standing. For the cathedral-spire-above-the-rooftops shot, walk to the southern end of Mazā Pils where it joins Klostera and look back. Best light is early morning (the row faces roughly south-east, so the sun lights the facades from about 7:00 to 10:00). Late afternoon throws the row into shadow.

My honest take

The Three Brothers are not a wow stop. There’s no climb, no entry queue, no light show. You walk up to a row of three houses, you stand opposite them, you look at them for five minutes, and you walk on. The thing the photograph doesn’t communicate is that you are looking at a layered piece of European urban history compressed into ten metres of street frontage. A medieval merchant house, a Dutch-Mannerist Hanseatic house, and a baroque house. People who probably never met each other built them, and the row is still standing, still recognisably the buildings the names describe. Allow ten minutes. Go early. Read the dates on the facades.

Frequently asked questions about the Three Brothers

Why are they called the Three Brothers?

It’s a popular nickname, not a historical name — the houses were not built or owned by three actual brothers. Local tradition has it that the three were built by men of the same family across successive generations, but there’s no documentary evidence for that. The nickname stuck because of the visual relationship: three different but neighbouring houses standing side by side, like siblings of different ages. Tallinn has its own ‘Three Sisters’ group that works the same way.

How old is the oldest house?

Number 17 dates from around 1490, late Gothic, and is the oldest stone dwelling house surviving in Riga. Number 19 was built in 1646 (date carved on the facade); number 21 is from the late 17th or early 18th century. Older buildings exist in Riga — the cathedral, St Peter’s, the Powder Tower — but those are religious or military structures. Number 17 is the oldest house in the sense of a private dwelling.

Where exactly are the Three Brothers?

Mazā Pils iela 17, 19, and 21, in the western half of Riga’s Old Town. Five minutes’ walk north of Riga Cathedral, three minutes south of Riga Castle. The street is pedestrianised; you can’t drive in.

Can you go inside?

Yes, you can go inside number 19, which houses the Latvian Museum of Architecture (Latvijas Arhitektūras muzejs). Entry is around €3 for adults, opening hours roughly Tuesday to Friday 09:00–17:00 plus Saturday 11:00–17:00 (closed Sundays and Mondays). Numbers 17 and 21 are not open to the public; they’re used as offices and private property. The courtyard behind number 19 is open during museum hours and free.

Is the Latvian Museum of Architecture worth visiting?

It’s a small specialist museum — honest answer is: yes if you’re an architect, an architecture student, or someone who actively enjoys looking at hand-drawn building plans and timber-frame samples. Otherwise probably not, except as a way of getting inside the building (which is the most interesting exhibit). For a 48-hour Riga visit, the Museum of the Occupation of Latvia and the Latvian War Museum in the Powder Tower are higher-priority museum stops.

How long do I need at the Three Brothers?

Five to ten minutes if you’re only looking at them from outside. Forty-five minutes if you also do the museum inside number 19. Walking the full length of Mazā Pils iela — up to Riga Castle and back — adds another 15 minutes and is one of the prettiest short walks in the Old Town.

What’s the best time to photograph the Three Brothers?

Early morning. The facades face roughly south-east, so the sun lights them between about 7:00 and 10:00. Stand on the opposite side of the lane, about ten metres south of number 17, for the canonical row shot. Late afternoon throws the houses into shadow but gives you the cathedral spire above the rooftops if you stand at the southern end of Mazā Pils and look back. By 11 in summer the lane fills with day-trip groups; before 9 you’ll often have it to yourself.

Are the Three Brothers like Tallinn’s Three Sisters?

Same idea, different details. Tallinn’s Three Sisters (Pikk 71) are three connected merchant houses from the 14th and 15th centuries, now a luxury hotel; they were built closer in time and are more uniform in style. Riga’s Three Brothers are three independent houses across three different centuries (1490, 1646, late 1600s), each in a different architectural language. The Tallinn group is more photogenic as a single facade; the Riga group rewards reading more.

Why is number 17 called the oldest stone dwelling in Riga?

Because it is — the oldest surviving stone-built private house in the city. Riga has older buildings (the cathedral from 1211, St Peter’s mentioned in 1209, the Powder Tower from the 14th century), but those are religious and military structures. Number 17 is the oldest example of a private dwelling. Most medieval Riga houses were timber-framed and burned down in successive city fires; number 17 survived because it was built in stone from the start, and because its later owners didn’t replace it with a fashionable rebuild.

What does ‘Soli Deo Gloria’ mean?

Latin: ‘to God alone be the glory’. It’s a standard Lutheran motto from the Reformation period, often abbreviated SDG, and is found on many 17th-century Lutheran buildings across northern Europe. By 1646 Riga had been Lutheran for over a century; the inscription on number 19 is exactly the kind of public piety a wealthy merchant of the 1640s would have wanted carved over his door. (J. S. Bach signed his manuscripts with the same letters a century later, for the same reason.)

Is the lane wheelchair-accessible?

Mazā Pils iela is properly cobblestoned and uneven, which is a real challenge for wheelchairs and mobility aids. The exterior view of the Three Brothers is from a flat section of cobbles, but the approach along the lane has bumpy patches. The Museum of Architecture inside number 19 is partially accessible — the ground-floor exhibition rooms are reachable, the upper floors via a narrow medieval stair are not.

Are there places to eat on Mazā Pils iela?

A handful of small restaurants and cafés open at the southern end of the lane in spring and summer, with outdoor seating on the cobbles. They’re fine for a coffee or a quick lunch but not particular destinations. For a proper Latvian sit-down meal nearby, walk five minutes south to the cellar tavern Folkklubs Ala Pagrabs (off Peldu iela) or three minutes east to one of the cafés on Doma laukums. The Old Town pillar guide has the full list with honest opinions.

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Daiga Taurīte is a licensed Latvian tour guide and co-founder of Barefoot Baltic, which runs small-group day excursions from Riga. She grew up in Riga, spent two decades working in London, and came home in 2024. Barefoot Baltic is licensed by Latvia’s Consumer Rights Protection Centre (PTAC), holds ATD passenger transport licence PS-01995, and is insured by BTA Baltic for civil liability.

The Three Brothers are on every walk we run through the western Old Town. If you’d like a half-day of Old Town with a licensed Latvian guide, building the Three Brothers, the Cathedral, the Castle and the Town Hall Square into one route, get in touch.