Panorama Riga observation deck tickets

The Panorama Riga observation deck, the city's best view, comes from an unlikely source: the Latvian Academy of Sciences, a Stalin-era skyscraper Latvians nicknamed "the birthday cake," with a 65-metre-high deck and 360-degree views over the whole city.

A Soviet skyscraper with a mocking nickname

The Latvian Academy of Sciences building rose in the 1950s as one of the first skyscrapers in the country – 108 metres tall across 21 storeys, modelled on Moscow's "Seven Sisters," the monumental high-rises built across the Soviet capital after World War II in a style known as Stalinist architecture or socialist classicism. Originally conceived as the "House of the Collective Farmer," it carries the movement's usual hammer-and-sickle decoration alongside, more unusually, traditional Latvian ornamental motifs. Locals gave it a string of unflattering nicknames during the Soviet period – "Stalin's Birthday Cake," "Stalin's Tooth," "Kremlin" among them – and it's often grouped with Warsaw's Palace of Culture and Science and Prague's Hotel International as architectural "communist cousins": three towers built in the same decade, in the same borrowed Moscow style, gifted or imposed on capitals across the Soviet sphere.

What the deck looks out over

From 65 metres up, the observation deck gives a 360-degree view that takes in Riga's Old Town spires and rooftops, the Daugava River, and two of the city's other major landmarks: the 368.5-metre TV Tower, the third-tallest in Europe, and the National Library of Latvia, whose angular glass form has earned it the nickname "Castle of Light."

Booking

The observation deck ticket is valid for one day and gives access to the 65-metre terrace whenever it's open. For a different vantage point closer to street level, St. Peter's Church offers its own viewing gallery from inside the Old Town itself.