Bastejkalns neighborhood in Riga Infrastructure

The area around Bastejkalns includes several memorial sites from the barricade era. The square, located at the intersection of Smilšu and Torņa streets, opposite the Powder Tower, was named the 1991 Barricade Square in 2016. The heavy equipment stationed here protected Old Riga from invasion at a strategically important location. The nearby Latvian War Museum housed barricade post no. 1.

On January 20, 1991, an OMON attack on the Ministry of Internal Affairs took place in the vicinity of Bastejkalns, which took the lives of several people. In the canalside greenery, opposite Bastejkalns, at the places where the victims were mortally wounded, memorials have been erected - stones to militia lieutenant Vladimir Gamanovič, inspector of the internal affairs department Sergejs Kononenko, director of the Riga Film Studio Andris Slapiņš, schoolboy Edijs Riekstiņš and the shot cameraman Gvido Zvaigznes, who died on February 5. There is a version that the shooters were not only and not so much OMON members, but also some “third force” - either from the special unit “Alfa”, or employees of the USSR State Security Committee from Moscow, who provoked the OMON attack on the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

A memorial stone has also been installed in the canalside gardens to the victim of August 19, 1991, Raimonds Salmiņš, who was shot by riot police near the Riga City Police Department building at the intersection of Aspazijas Boulevard and 13. janvāra Street. In 2014, a memorial plaque dedicated to the victims of the January 20, 1991 attack on the Ministry of the Interior was installed near the former Ministry of the Interior building at the corner of Raina Boulevard and Reimersa Street.