Only at a few minutes walk from the center of the town there is the Liepaja Beach and the Seaside Park. They were developed in the second half of the 19th century when after 1860 and 1862 Liepaja became a popular watering place. Tsars and crown princes, princesses, merchants and factory owners – they all swarmed here to enjoy themselves. The rapidly growing town provided entertainment for itself and its guests. The dunes were raised to secure the park from the sea, rich soil was brought to the former potato fields and a park was laid out. Bathhouses and summer houses were built. At the same time more and more villas, so different from the buildings in the center appeared near the park lured by the peace and quite and the beauty of the place. To see all this you can go to the seaside along Peldu Iela (Bath Street), turn into Dzintaru Iela (Amber Street) and Liepu Street (Lime Street), walk in Hikes and Vites Streets and stroll leisurely in the hundred year old park.

Roz'u Laukums  

1. Peldu Nr. 15 The building at 15 Peldu Street was built in 1871 after M. P. Bertchy's design as his own house and office. It was rebuilt in 1912 after the design of M. Bertchy, Jun. The two-story house is a stone structure with a large basement and an eclectic façade with traces of neo-Romanticism. It houses the curia of the Liepaja Diocese of the Roman Catholic Church.
2. Peldu Nr. 44 The apartment house with a shop on the ground floor at 44 Peldu Street was designed by the architect M. P. Bertchy for himself. The red brick building with bay windows, a gable roof and a little tower is a pleasant accent in the panorama of the street. The façade prides itself of neo-gothic forms and numerous decorations.
3. Peldu Nr. 39 / U'liha Nr. 44 The building at 39 Peldu / U'liha Streets was built in 1902 for the Ministry of Communications. It is a stone structure, so typical of a closely built city quarter, with a façade molded in plaster.
4. Peldu Nr. 43 The house at 43 Peldu Street was built around 1898 for the small traders H. Kort and W. Küssner. It is two-story building, typical seaside resort zone – a plastic composition in the middle of a garden with façades decorated with an ornamental woodcut. The building is one of the most magnificent wooden houses in the quarter.
5. Peldu Nr. 58/60/62 The group of houses at 58/60/62 Peldu Street was built at the end of the 19th century for the builder Wilchelm Riege. It is composed of three buildings – two similar side structures are symmetrically placed along the street, the central building has stepped back from the street. Note the eclectic red brick façade with the sophisticated plaster details.

Dzintaru and Liepu Ielas

In Liepu and Dzintaru Streets there are mainly rich villas, built at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century. They are two or three-story buildings moved back from the street. Almost every house here is noteworthy and singular.

6. Dzintaru Nr. 10 The house at 10 Dzintaru Street was built around 1902 for the merchant K. Zakovski. It is one of the most original and beautiful buildings of the district – a two story magnificent house with a terrace, a balcony and verandas. Note the refined details of its façade.
7. Dzintaru Nr. 16 The apartment building at 16 Dzintaru Street was built at the beginning of our century for the Merchant W. Raeder. It is a wooden house in the national romanticism style with a rich décor carved in wood, a scale-like tile roof and corner tower over the main entrance.
8. Dzintaru Nr. 23 The villa at 23 Dzintaru Street was built in 1913 for the Swedish consul Karl Ekblom (Finnish architect L. Sonk). It is a northerly reserved two-story building in the national romanticism style with a terrace – a strictly geometrical structure with a finely balanced designed of the façade.
9. Liepu Nr. 27 The house at 27 Liepu Street was built in 1913 for the merchant E. Schmidt, by the architect E. Jennike and M. P. Bertchy JR. It is a romantic and noble three-story stone building, one of the most magnificent jugendstil buildings in Liepaja. It house the Russian Consulate at present.
10. Liepu Nr. 23 J. Traufold's three-story apartment house built in 1912 has covered balconies and wooden verandas and an ascetic jugendstil façade.
11. Liepu Nr. 13 At 13 Liepu Street a house for the ship builder Adolf Friedrichsohn was built around 1902. It is a two-story wooden house with verandas decorated with wooden lace. Paintings are preserved on the walls and ceilings of the stairwell.
12. Liepu Nr. 9 The house at 9 Liepu Street was built around 1900 for J, Berner by the architect M. P. Bertchy. It is a three-story redbrick building with a restrained façade. It houses the children's hospital at present.

Hikes un Vites Ielas

The Liepaja Burgomaster Lorenz Joachim Huecke bequeathed his fortune to the found of an orphanage. The merchant Anton Witte bequeathed her fortune to the founding of an orphanage as well. At the end of the 19th century in the seaside park were built summer houses – rich two-story both wooden and stone villas and bath-houses. In the center of this district is one of the landmark of the park – the swan pond with a temple on an island. The houses were built according to uniform building rules that determined their height, type, distance between them and the gardens around them. At present the buildings are in very bad condition.

13. Hika Nr. 9 The apartment house at 9 Hikes Street was built at the end of the 19th century for the merchant A. Seligmann. It is a two-story stone house with an elevated middle part and a veranda. The façade prides itself on a striped plastering and accentuated apertures of windows. At present it is rented by the Liepaja Port Administration.
14. Vi'tolu Nr. 34/36 The house at 34/36 Vi'tolu Street was built in 1880ies for H. Ulich. It is a one-story wooden building with a porch and a little tower, typical of the seaside park zone. Its façade is decorated with woodcut lace.
15. Vi'tolu Nr. 39 The house at 39 Vi'tolu Street was built after the architect M. P. Bertchy's designed for the merchant G. D. Puchert. It is an eclectic two-story redbrick building with a bay window and a balcony, decorated with details of plaster. The building houses a kindergarten at present.

Ju'rmalas Parks

The area of the seaside park spreads over 50 hectares (123 acres) . It was laid out in stages starting with 1870, till the beginning of the 20th century. Special Merit for its development is due to the Liepaja Burgomaster and later its first mayor (1878-1880) K. G. S. Ulich. The oldest part of the park lies between U'liha Street, Peldu Street and Ku'rma'jas Avenue. There are different kinds of lime trees, ashes, maples, willows, birches, conifers, as well as foreign trees and bushes in the park. To cater for the comfort of the guests, bathhouses, a pump-house, summerhouses as well as tennis courts and fountains were built here. It is a nice place for walks today as well. There are playgrounds for children, a stadium, several tennis courts and a concert garden.

16. Peldu Nr. 59 The building at 59 Peldu Street is a bathhouse of the watering place. It was built in 1902 after the design of architect M. P. Bertchy. It is a one-story structure with a doric colonnade and an elevated central part covered with a cupola. It used to have roman baths, warm sea-water baths and mud-baths of healing mud from Liepaja Lake.
17. Concert Garden The concert garden "Pu't Ve'jin,I" (architect P. Milzara'js) was built in 1964 as a partly covered summer open-air theatre. In 1988 a garden was laid around it.