“What is that concrete tower?” asks one of the tourists. Don’t let it happen again!” Sure enough, on the next tour, the same question comes up. He upbraids the guide: “Comrade, you have cast aspersions on the efficiency of Soviet industry. “It’s a hotel that they’ve been building for years.” This being the USSR, there is a KGB informant in the group. One asks about the monstrosity looming over the city and is told the truth. This eyesore was the subject of a local joke: a tour guide is showing a group of westerners around the city. But during the mid-1970s, when Latvia was a Soviet republic, the skyline was blighted by a multi-storey concrete shell that became, after many delays, the Intourist hotel. C entral Riga is one of the architectural charms of Europe – a cobbled medieval labyrinth enclosed in a belt of art nouveau houses.
