Ethnic Museum - The World of Hat

The history of our museum began on a sultry night in January 2002, when its first exhibit, a female headdress of the Akha people, decorated with cowries, metal plates and coins, was detected at a night market in the northern Thai city. of Chiang Mai.

From that day until 2014, the collection continued to expand with new artifacts from all corners of the world, until the exhibits would no longer fit into cabinets or shelves. Then came the idea of creating the world's only museum of ethnic headdresses in the quiet "embassy district" of Riga.

The museum is based on the private collection of headdresses of Latvian anthropologist, linguist and traveler Kirill Babaev. The collection started in 2002 and now contains over 400 articles.

The headdress is organized in five rooms representing the five different continents. The headdress comprises male and female shapes, many of which are embellished with decorative embroidery of some kind. The museum has also begun to collect footwear and headgear.

Map: Ethnic Museum - The World of Hat