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The boulevards of the New Town , rolling east from Old Riga, bear witness to a period of rapid urban expansion that began in 1857, when the city's medieval walls were demolished, and lasted right up until World War I. As Riga grew into a major industrial centre and country-dwellers flocked to the city, four- and five-storey apartment buildings - many of them decorated with extravagant Jugendstil motifs - were erected to house the expanding middle class. As you head east out along Kalku, which widens out and becomes Brivibas bulvaris, the defiantly modernist Freedom Monument (Brivibas piemineklis) dominates the view. This stylized female figure, placed here in 1935 and known as "Milda", holds aloft three stars symbolizing the three regions of Latvia. Incredibly, the monument survived the Soviet era, and nowadays two soldiers stand guard here in symbolic protection of Latvia's independence. Running north from Brivibas bulvaris to the east of the Freedom Monument is the formal Esplanade Park with the Cathedral of Christ's Nativity (Kristus dzimsanas katedrale) just inside its grounds. This late nineteenth-century mock-Byzantine creation was recently returned to the city's Orthodox community after serving as a planetarium during the Soviet period. At the far end of the park is the State Museum of Latvian Art (Valsts makslas muzejs), Valdemara iela 10A (Mon & Wed-Sun 11am-5pm; 1.40Ls), housed in a grandiose Neoclassical building. Among the numerous nineteenth- and twentieth-century Latvian works inside, the odd street scenes and portraits of Janis Tidemanis (1897-1964) make the most lasting impression. Beyond the park it's worth continuing along Brivibas bulvaris as far as the Alexander Nevsky Church (Aleksandra Nevska Baznica) at no. 56, an attractive little Orthodox church from the 1820s, partly concealed by trees on the southern side of the street. Jugendstil architectural embellishments - florid stucco swirls surrounding doorways, stylized human faces incorporated into facades, and towers fancifully placed on top of buildings - can be seen on virtually every street of the New Town and, while walking through the area, it always pays to look up to catch details that might otherwise pass by unnoticed. One of the most famous Jugendstil creations in the city is at Elizabetes 10a and 10b , an apartment building adorned with plaster flourishes and gargoyles, and topped by two vast impassive faces. It was designed by Mikhail Eisenstein, the architect father of Sergei, director of the film Battleship Potemkin ; more of Eisenstein's creations can be seen a block north of here at Alberta iela 2, 2a, 4, 6, 8 and 13.
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