My name is Aleksandrs Cakste and I would like to tell you the history of our family and the building of the hotel.

My great-great grandfather Antons Benjamins was born in 1860. At the end of the 19th century Antons worked as a school teacher and also as tutor for the families living in this building.

According to the family-saga, Anton’s admiration for the building and its families grew with every visit and finally he decided that he wanted to become the sole owner of this particular apartment building. As time progressed, he eventually became a very successful businessman, particularly active in the Latvian newspaper and book publishing sector. In 1901, he finally managed to acquire this building and immediately began a comprehensive renovation.

In 1934 his daughter Marta, my mother’s grandmother, moved into the building with her family (her husband Mintauts and their children Janis and Aija) and resided here for many years in a spacious apartment on the third floor.

It was on the same third floor that my mother’s grandfather Mintauts was, years later, brought to for questioning by the German Gestapo for his suspected involvement in the Latvian resistance movement. He was eventually freed; his brother, however, was convicted and deported to a Nazi concentration camp in Stutthof. Many years ago my grandfather Jānis told me about how he had walked from Valdemara street down to the train station to say farewell to his beloved uncle for the last time.

In 1944 Marta and Mintauts, together with their children Janis and Aija fled to Sweden. Their terrifying journey first went through the occupied country-side of Latvia to a town called Ventspils on the west coast of Latvia. The only way to continue on from there was onboard an undercover fishing boat that took them to Gotland in Sweden.

I came to Latvia for the first time in 1989. It was an amazing journey: first by boat to Tallinn via Helsinki, and then further by bus to Riga. With me on this trip I had my mother, brother, uncle, grandfather and grandmother. This was the first time in 45 years that my grandparents returned to their native country. We stayed at the only official hotel for tourists, the Intourist (now the hotel Reval). During our first evening in Riga my grandfather suddenly said: "We used to live in this neighbourhood. Let us go and see if the building is still there". We decided to walk the short distance and to our surprise discovered that the building was in fact still standing. We were later informed that during the Soviet occupation the building had been developed into a hotel used mainly by Soviet military officers and was no longer a residential building.

Finally, in 1991, after the restoration of independence of the Republic of Latvia, my family got the building back officially.

In 2003 my family along with our cousin Janis Benjamins decided to completely renovate this facility and make it a modern, international and friendly establishment. The process has been long and arduous but all the work that has been put into it has payed off. This became apparent already after the first section of our new hotel was opened in August 2005 and even more so since our grand opening in May 2006.

Today my cousin Maria, my mother Kristine, my uncle Karl Mikael and I are all actively involved with the hotel – so it is in fact very much a family business.

I hope that you will enjoy your stay here with us at Valdemars and your visit to Riga, and I would once again like to welcome you to both a building and city full of history.