Although the baby blue Our Lady of Sorrows Church of Riga has a decidedly negative name, the story of its construction is positively miraculous. On a trip to St. Petersburg in 1780, Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II saw a tiny wooden chapel on Pils laukums and decided to fund the construction of a proper Catholic church here. The foundations were laid three years later after King Stanislaw of Poland-Lithuania and Paul I (Catherine the Great’s son) also donated funds to the pious endeavour. It was expanded in the direction of the river in the mid-1800s at the behest of Tsar Nicholas I. The attractive building with the red-tiled roof on the right was erected as a Catholic school in the late-18th century.