I had a few days in Riga, and visited both my hotel spa, ESPA Riga (at the Radisson Riga Conference & Spa), Welton SPA Centrum, and the Welton SPA Riverside. The ESPA and Riverside both were wonderful, the former being at the top of the hotel and the latter at the bottom. Both had a selection of nice saunas and pools.
Radisson was by far the overall best choice; they had several floors in the spa. One with the lobby and a cafeteria, another with the changing rooms, a third one with a big pool and the gym (the big pool was under renovation though), and the top floor where the small round sauna pods, steam pods, the big sauna, and the relaxation rooms were at. At the center of this there was also an outdoor pool protected by glass walls, maybe 6-7 meters long and maybe 4-5 meters wide. It was mostly a warm jacuzzi-style pool, but I managed to swin 250 meters on it though...
The Welton chain has several places in Riga, all in hotels. I visited their Centrum and Riverside locations; Centrum was pretty basic with one pool, maybe 7-8 meters long, one sauna, one steam room. Oh and one jacuzzi.
The Riverside was quite nice, they had a bigger pool, 12.5 meters long (did 450 meters on that one...). Then a therapy pool and a cold plunge pool. And a steam room and two nice saunas with different temperatures. I liked this location a lot.
Radisson:
Welton Centrum:
Welton Riverside:
City views:
Flight home:
This article has also been published at Planetswimmer.com here. Read the full series of sauna and swimming stories from planetswimmer.com and saunablogger.cool, urban exploration articles at theurbanexplorer.net, or all blog articles from Blogspot. Photos and text (c) 2026 by Jari Arkko. Pool and sauna photos in this article were taken when the facility was empty or closed.
This article was originally published in the Planetskier Blogspot article series.
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