Ķemeri

Ķemeri National Park was established in 1997 on the coast of the Gulf of Riga, west of the Latvian capital, and protects some 381 km².

Its most recognisable feature is the Great Ķemeri Bog, a raised bog of several thousand hectares crossed by a wooden boardwalk that lets visitors enter a landscape of dark pools, sphagnum ridges and stunted pines, especially prized at dawn with the mist. The park also includes shallow coastal lakes, marshes, forests and a stretch of shoreline with dunes.

Underground, the water that filters through the layers of gypsum and peat emerges in sulphurous springs and mud deposits, whose therapeutic properties gave rise in the nineteenth century to the Ķemeri spa, which became one of the most renowned in the Russian Empire; the great spa hotel, now disused, is still standing. The wildlife includes elk, beaver, red deer, lynx and a notable wetland birdlife, with cranes and lesser spotted eagles, and the coastal lakes are a migration stopover.