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A few hundred metres south of Old Riga, near the bus and train stations, is the bustling Central Market (Centralais tirgus), housed in a couple of hulking 1930s Zeppelin-sized hangars. As well as being a useful source of fruit and vegetables, the market is an interesting place to wander round - but keep an eye on your possessions. Five run-down blocks southeast of the market on Elijas iela, the white-painted Jesus Church (Jezus Baznica), is surrounded by a neighbourhood of decaying timber houses. Dating back to 1635, this is Riga's oldest wooden church, though it's been rebuilt following fires a couple of times since then. The interior is unusual, with a circular central hall supported by wooden pillars. The church is overshadowed by the Academy of Sciences (Latvijas Zinatnu Akedemija) at Turgeneva 19, a Soviet-era pile built in monumental "wedding-cake" style during the early 1960s and nicknamed "Stalin's Birthday Cake". Riga's Ghetto , the area originally inhabited by the city's Jews and to which the Nazis later restricted Riga's Jewish inhabitants, was located about 1km southeast of the train station, in an area now bounded by Lacplesa iela, Maskvas iela, Lauvas iela and Kalna iela. Most of its original inhabitants were murdered at Salaspils concentration camp, outside the city, between November 30 and December 8, 1941. The ghetto remained in operation, occupied by Jews from elsewhere in Europe until 1943, when it was liquidated on the orders of Himmler after the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. Riga still has a several-thousand-strong Jewish community and their synagogue is at Peitavas 6-8 in the old town. On the edge of the former ghetto at Krasta 73, is the gold-domed Grebenscikova Church (Grebenscikova Baznica), a wooden church dating from 1814 with a congregation of Old Believers, a dissenting sect which broke away from the Orthodox church during the seventeenth century, many of whose members had fled Russia to escape persecution. To the south of the former ghetto area on Rabbit Island (Zaku sala; take bus #40 or #40A across the bridge) is Riga's TV Tower, a 368-metre concrete tripod, with a viewing platform and restaurant halfway up, which ranks as one of the highest buildings in the world.
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