Brāļu kapi

The Brethren Cemetery (Brāļu kapi) in Riga is an important national memorial commemorating the soldiers who fell in World War I and in Latvia's War of Independence from 1915 to 1920. Part of a larger forest cemetery complex in the northeast of the city, the site was landscaped as a park by garden director Georg Kuphaldt and his student Andrejs Zeidaks. The central memorial, designed by the sculptor Kārlis Zāle, was completed between 1924 and 1936. Visitors follow a symbolic path that leads along a linden-lined avenue to a grove of one hundred oaks, in the middle of which burns an eternal flame. The heart of the site is the central burial ground, with the graves of both named and unnamed fighters, framed by tuff stone walls and reliefs. The memorial culminates in the monumental statue of a mother with her fallen sons, which stands atop a high pedestal. Besides its historical significance as a place of mourning and remembrance of the founding of the Latvian state, the grounds also contain graves from later eras, including soldiers of World War II.