The Riga Radio and TV Tower ( lv, Rīgas radio un televīzijas tornis) in

Riga Riga (; lv, Rīga , liv, Rīgõ) is the capital and largest city of Latvia and is home to 605,802 inhabitants which is a third of Latvia's population. The city lies on the Gulf of Riga at the mouth of the Daugava river where it meets the Ba ...

Latvia Latvia ( or ; lv, Latvija ; ltg, Latveja; liv, Leţmō), officially the Republic of Latvia ( lv, Latvijas Republika, links=no, ltg, Latvejas Republika, links=no, liv, Leţmō Vabāmō, links=no), is a country in the Baltic region of ...

is the tallest tower in the

European Union The European Union (EU) is a supranational political and economic union of member states that are located primarily in Europe. The union has a total area of and an estimated total population of about 447million. The EU has often been des ...

. It was built between 1979 and 1989 with funding from the central government of the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...

. Its highest point reaches , which makes it the third tallest tower in

Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a Continent#Subcontinents, subcontinent of Eurasia ...

(after the Ostankino Tower at and the

Kyiv TV Tower The Kyiv TV Tower ( uk, Телевізійна вежа, translit=Televiziyna vezha) is a lattice metal tower on Oranzhereina Street, Kyiv, Ukraine, and is the tallest structure in the country. The tower was built in 1973 while Kyiv was the ca ...

at ) and the 15th tallest self-supporting tower in the world.

Features

There was a restaurant, "Vēja roze" ("Wind Rose"), at the level, which was open since the completion of the tower until 2006. There is a public observation platform just above it at , from which most of the city and surroundings and the

Gulf of Riga The Gulf of Riga, Bay of Riga, or Gulf of Livonia ( lv, Rīgas līcis, et, Liivi laht) is a bay of the Baltic Sea between Latvia and Estonia. The island of Saaremaa (Estonia) partially separates it from the rest of the Baltic Sea. The main c ...

can be seen.

Reconstruction

Since May 2019, the tower has closed to visitors for about five years for the renovation and expansion of the visitors' area and the adjacent territory under the TV Tower 2.0 project. It is planned to re-open in 2023 when there will again be a restaurant and the tower's

bomb shelter A bomb shelter is a structure designed to provide protection against the effects of a bomb. Types of shelter Different kinds of bomb shelters are configured to protect against different kinds of attack and strengths of hostile explosives. Air ...

will open to the public. A 500 kg

Foucault pendulum The Foucault pendulum or Foucault's pendulum is a simple device named after French physicist Léon Foucault, conceived as an experiment to demonstrate the Earth's rotation. A long and heavy pendulum suspended from the high roof above a circular ...

will also be installed. The estimated costs are €40-50 million.

Construction

The design chosen for the tower was that of

Georgia Georgia most commonly refers to: * Georgia (country), a country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia * Georgia (U.S. state), a state in the Southeast United States Georgia may also refer to: Places Historical states and entities * Related to the ...

n architect Kims Nikurdze. Also credited are Nikolajs Sergijevskis and Viktors Savčenko. Construction materials included

dolomite Dolomite may refer to: *Dolomite (mineral), a carbonate mineral *Dolomite (rock), also known as dolostone, a sedimentary carbonate rock *Dolomite, Alabama, United States, an unincorporated community *Dolomite, California, United States, an unincor ...

from

Saaremaa Saaremaa is the largest island in Estonia, measuring . The main island of Saare County, it is located in the Baltic Sea, south of Hiiumaa island and west of Muhu island, and belongs to the West Estonian Archipelago. The capital of the island i ...

, Karelian granite, and ironwork that had been prefabricated in

Chelyabinsk Chelyabinsk ( rus, Челя́бинск, p=tɕɪˈlʲæbʲɪnsk, a=Ru-Chelyabinsk.ogg; ba, Силәбе, ''Siläbe'') is the administrative center and largest city of Chelyabinsk Oblast, Russia. It is the seventh-largest city in Russia, with a ...

. The assembly was done by the St Petersburg North-western Ironwork Assembly Trust. The tower is built on an island called Zaķusala (English: Hare Island) in the middle of the River

Daugava , be, Заходняя Дзвіна (), liv, Vēna, et, Väina, german: Düna , image = Fluss-lv-Düna.png , image_caption = The drainage basin of the Daugava , source1_location = Valdai Hills, Russia , mouth_location = Gulf of Riga, Baltic Se ...

, and the base of the tower is located about

above mean sea level Height above mean sea level is a measure of the vertical distance (height, elevation or altitude) of a location in reference to a historic mean sea level taken as a vertical datum. In geodesy, it is formalized as ''orthometric heights''. The comb ...

. The tower is built to resist winds up to without any noticeable

vibration Vibration is a mechanical phenomenon whereby oscillations occur about an equilibrium point. The word comes from Latin ''vibrationem'' ("shaking, brandishing"). The oscillations may be periodic function, periodic, such as the motion of a pendulum ...

with the help of three dampers installed at the level. Though seismic activity is rare, the tower was designed to withstand a

magnitude Magnitude may refer to: Mathematics *Euclidean vector, a quantity defined by both its magnitude and its direction *Magnitude (mathematics), the relative size of an object *Norm (mathematics), a term for the size or length of a vector *Order of ...

7.5 earthquake. The projected service life of the tower is 250 years.

Bottom section

The support section of the tower rises the first , comprising the three pillars that give the tower its unusual appearance, and a central building that contains offices and machine rooms. There are two high-speed sloping elevators, one in the north-east pillar and one in the south-west

pillar A column or pillar in architecture and structural engineering is a structural element that transmits, through compression, the weight of the structure above to other structural elements below. In other words, a column is a compression member. ...

, that ascend the bottom section in just 42 seconds. The third pillar contains a staircase. It is one of only three "tall" towers in the world that has 3 pillars; the others are the

Avala Tower The Avala Tower ( sr-cyr, Авалски торањ, Avalski toranj) is a tall telecommunications tower located on Mount Avala, in Belgrade, Serbia. The original tower was finished in 1965, but was destroyed on 29 April 1999, during the NATO ...

Belgrade Belgrade ( , ;, ; Names of European cities in different languages: B, names in other languages) is the Capital city, capital and List of cities in Serbia, largest city in Serbia. It is located at the confluence of the Sava and Danube rivers a ...

and

Žižkov Television Tower The Žižkov Television Tower ( cs, Žižkovský vysílač) is a unique transmitter tower built in Prague between 1985 and 1992. Designed by the architect Václav Aulický and the structural engineer Jiří Kozák, it stands high above the city's ...

Prague Prague ( ; cs, Praha ; german: Prag, ; la, Praga) is the capital and largest city in the Czech Republic, and the historical capital of Bohemia. On the Vltava river, Prague is home to about 1.3 million people. The city has a temperate ...

Middle section

The middle section, at , contains equipment and a central elevator and is enclosed by panels of

COR-TEN Weathering steel, often referred to by the genericised trademark COR-TEN steel and sometimes written without the hyphen as corten steel, is a group of steel alloys which were developed to eliminate the need for painting, and form a stable ru ...

, an aluminum-iron alloy.

Top section

The top section, at , is a cylindrical structure which supports and contains the various antennas, and is topped by a flagpole. An elevator rises to the machine rooms at the level, and stairs ascend another .

Operations

The tower started broadcasting regularly in January 1986, though construction work continued until 1989. The following television channels are broadcast from the tower: * Latvian Television 1 * Latvian Television 7 * TV3 * RīgaTV 24 *

DVB-T DVB-T, short for Digital Video Broadcasting – Terrestrial, is the DVB European-based consortium standard for the broadcast transmission of digital terrestrial television that was first published in 1997 and first broadcast in Singapore in Febr ...

signal (experimental) The following radio stations broadcast from the tower: There is a

DAB+ DAB, dab, dabs, or dabbing may refer to: Dictionaries * ''Dictionary of American Biography'', published under the auspices of the American Council of Learned Societies * ''Dictionary of Australian Biography'', published since 1949 Places * Dąb, ...

test on channel 12D. Additionally, broadcast and two-way communications services are provided for various organizations and government agencies.

Notes

Sources vary slightly as to the exact height: The official website shows ; Emporis claims the exact equivalent, ; Structurae claims .

References

External links

(in Latvian)">Project "TV tornis 2.0" at the website of the Latvian State Radio and Television Center (in Latvian)Former fficial homepage
in Latvian, English, Russian, German * {{DEFAULTSORT:Riga Radio and TV Tower Towers completed in 1989 Towers built in the Soviet Union Towers in Riga Radio masts and towers in Europe Observation towers Restaurant towers Telecommunications in Latvia