Bonaventuras muiža

Bonaventura Manor stands in Riga as a manor complex whose origins reach the late sixteenth century. Its grounds include several buildings and remnants of a park that once stretched towards Lake Jugla. The surviving ensemble shows how Riga’s growing suburbs once combined residences, landscaped grounds, and working premises.

The estate probably began around 1585, while the first written mention dates from 1625. Bonaventura Möller then owned it, followed by the Lütken, Ballod, Löwis of Menar, and von Wulf families. Land reforms brought expropriation in 1919, after which the Latvian State Bank held the property. The complex now houses the administration of the Latvian Ethnographic Open-Air Museum.

The present main house dates from the 1850s and displays neoclassical columns on its lakeside façade. A simple seventeenth-century wooden house survives as the oldest wooden building in Riga. Workers once used the estate for a carriage workshop, vinegar factory, dairy, distillery, and liqueur factory. The old main building moved to the open-air museum in 1936, changing the original arrangement while preserving this remarkable architectural ensemble.