Centrs

First impressions

Centrs is a remarkably intact planned centre. Red-brick factories, public buildings and apartment houses sit on a grid that was endorsed in St. Petersburg in 1826 and built out through the 19th-century industrial boom, in a local style so distinct that people call it Latgalian Baroque. It is the city's hallmark, and the historical centre is protected as architectural heritage of national importance.

The spine is Rīgas iela, one of Latvia's first pedestrianised streets, walking-only since the late 1970s and rebuilt in 2009. It is lined with shops, cafés and landmarks like the Jugendstil Daugavpils Museum building of 1883 and the 1876 fire station, and it runs under an arch onto the Daugava embankment. You can read the whole centre on foot in an afternoon.

The honest caveat is that this is a regional centre far from the capital, and the wider city's structural story, a population that fell about 7.7% between 2014 and 2021, shows in patches of under-invested stock.

Who lives here, and what the streets look like

Centrs holds the Russian-speaking majority that defines the whole city. Around 89% of Daugavpils residents spoke Russian at home as of 2018, and the ethnic mix is roughly half Russian, then Poles, Belarusians and Latvians. That matters, and it is worth stating plainly: daily life, the shops and the street run largely in Russian, with Latvian the sole official language. Unlike almost-wholly-Russian Narva across in Estonia, Daugavpils has real Polish and Belarusian communities too, and is often called Latvia's most multi-ethnic city.

On the ground, the centre is a mix of older residents, working households, students of Daugavpils University, and the small pool of public-sector, retail and culture workers the centre draws. The streetscape is low, dense and handsome, red brick and stucco along a flat grid, with the pedestrian street as its living room.

Getting around

Centrs is the walkable heart, and Rīgas iela is car-free, so everything central is on foot. Daugavpils is also one of only three tram cities in Latvia, and central stops put the whole four-line, roughly 25 km network and the city buses within reach. A single fare is 1.00 euro and a monthly pass is 45 euros. The railway station sits at the top of Rīgas iela, with intercity trains on the Riga line.

The catch is scale and distance. This is a genuinely remote regional centre: Riga Airport is about 230 km northwest, so there is no fast air link, and Vilnius Airport in Lithuania, about 185 km away, is comparable for some trips. Confirm current Riga train times before you rely on them.

Daily life

Everyday shopping is strong for the city and clustered in the centre. Solo sits right on Rīgas iela 9, in the same building as the Park Hotel Latgola, with grocers, everyday retail, cafés and restaurants along the pedestrian street. For food delivery, Wolt and Bolt Food both cover Daugavpils, with real if smaller choice than Riga.

Local Places Worth Knowing

Independent and close by, chosen on merit. Nobody pays to appear here.

LandmarkRīgas iela pedestrian street

The half-kilometre car-free spine of the centre, red-brick and Jugendstil facades running from the railway station to the river.

Photo: Gamma restaurant / Google

Restaurant★ 4.4Gamma

A well-regarded restaurant in a historic building on the Rīgas iela pedestrian street, pitched as the city's step up in gastronomy and service.

Photo: Juris Jersovs / Google

Café★ 4.0Dvinskas sēta

A popular central café praised for its coffee, food and welcoming service, an easy stop on the walking street.

Photo: Photos are copyrighted by their owners / Google

Market★ 4.5Solo

The central shopping centre at Rīgas iela 9, in the Park Hotel Latgola building, with grocers and everyday retail in the heart of the centre.

View on Google Maps

Checked August 2026. Places close and change, so tell us if something here is out of date.

Schools and families

Several schools serve the centre, along with Daugavpils University a short way off. Latvia publishes centralised-exam results but no usable per-school quality ranking. It is the sort of gap we would rather flag than fill, which is part of why we build these Daugavpils guides the way we do. Check the specific schools and their language of instruction before you sign a lease or purchase.

Green space, leisure and eating out

The Daugava embankment and river promenade at the foot of Rīgas iela are the centre's open-air draw, with the pedestrian street itself as public space and city squares and parks between the blocks. The museums and theatres of the centre sit within a few minutes' walk, and the fortress and its parkland are a short tram ride northwest. Eating out leans onto the walking street, where independents like Gamma and Dvinskas sēta sit among the everyday cafés.

What it costs

Centrs is cheap by Latvian and EU standards, and central Daugavpils sits at or just above the city average while staying near the bottom nationally. Latvia publishes no official per-district figure, so we use Numbeo's crowd-sourced city numbers: about 1 417 EUR / m² ≈ $150 / sq ft to buy in the centre, and roughly 303 EUR / mo for a central one-bedroom to rent. Both are market estimates, so confirm live listings before you commit.

The honest downsides

A shrinking regional economy. Centrs shares the city's structural story, a population that fell about 7.7% between 2014 and 2021 as more people died than were born and others moved away, and the Latgale region carries Latvia's highest unemployment and lowest incomes. That leaves some fine 19th-century stock tired or under-invested.

It is genuinely far from Riga. At about 230 km from the capital and its main economic core, with no scale airport nearby, this is a remote regional centre, not a well-connected metro. The low prices are partly the price of that distance.

Crime and safety

Latvia's statistics office publishes recorded crime only by municipality, so there is no standalone Centrs figure; pull the exact city number from the CSP table before you rely on it. The one captured measure is Numbeo's crowd-sourced index, which reads Daugavpils as a low-crime city with very high daytime walking safety and low violent crime. Latvia as a whole has carried the EU's highest recorded homicide rate in recent years, but that is a national statistic shaped by wider social factors, not a Centrs-street fact, and Latgale's status as the poorest region is best read as economics rather than street danger.

Is this you?

If you want a walkable, historic and genuinely cheap city centre, are comfortable living in a Russian-speaking city, and accept the distance from Riga, Centrs is Daugavpils at its most characterful. If you would rather trade the old-town texture for the quiet of a heritage setting or plainer, cheaper block housing, look at Cietoksnis inside the fortress or Jaunbūve on the new-town side.

Nearby: Cietoksnis · Jaunbūve