Tallinn

The Lower Town (Vanalinn) is the commercial heart of medieval Tallinn: the Town Hall Square (Raekoja plats), animated by outdoor cafés and a weekly market, is surrounded by Gothic merchant houses, the 15th-century Town Hall (Estonia's only surviving Gothic town hall), and the Raeapteek — a pharmacy documented in operation since at least 1422, claimed to be the oldest continuously operating apothecary in Europe. The surrounding lanes contain guild halls (the Brotherhood of Black Heads, the Great Guild), St Olaf's Church (whose 159-metre spire was the world's tallest in the 16th century and now has a viewing platform), and the St Nicholas Church museum (with Bernt Notke's 15th-century Dance Macabre painting). The Katariina käik (St Catherine's Passage), a narrow alley running between Müürivahe Street and Vene Street, is lined with artisan workshops — glassblowers, jewellers, textile artists — and is one of the most atmospheric medieval lanes in any European city.

Toompea (the Dome Hill) is Tallinn's upper citadel, historically the seat of power: first Danish, then Teutonic Order, then Swedish, then Russian, now Estonian. The hilltop is reached via the Long Leg (Pikk jalg) and Short Leg (Lühike jalg) gates — medieval archways that connect upper and lower town and are among the most photographed spots in Tallinn. The Riigikogu (Estonian Parliament) occupies a pink Baroque palace built on the medieval castle; the original Teutonic tower (Tall Hermann, 1371) still flies the Estonian tricolour. The Alexander Nevsky Cathedral (1900), the most prominent Orthodox church in Tallinn, was built by the Russian Empire as a statement of authority. Two viewing platforms at Patkuli and Kohtuotsa offer some of the finest rooftop views in the Baltic.

Kadriorg, 2 km east of the Old Town, is Tallinn's most elegant neighbourhood: a Baroque palace commissioned by Peter the Great in 1718–25 (now the Museum of Foreign Art), surrounded by a formal park of lime trees and fountains, and flanked by the Kumu Art Museum (2006), the finest art gallery in the Baltic. Kumu holds Estonia's national art collection from the 18th century to the present, with a particularly strong collection of avant-garde art from the Soviet occupation period, including work that could not be shown publicly when it was made. The Kadriorg area also contains the KUMU café, the Song Festival Grounds (Lauluväljak), and the entrance to Tallinn Beach (Pirita strand).

The Lennusadam Seaplane Harbour is housed in three concrete hangars built in 1916–17 using an innovative parabolic thin-shell construction that remained the largest of its kind in the world until 1919. The hangars, on Tallinn's old seaplane base on the peninsula, now shelter Estonia's maritime museum: a submarine (Lembit, 1936, used by the Estonian and then Soviet navy), a full-size icebreaker, seaplanes, and the largest collection of naval artefacts in the Baltic states. The architecture alone — the vast unobstructed interior of the concrete domes, flooded with light — is worth the visit.

Tallinn is an excellent base for day trips. The Viru Bog (Viru raba) in Lahemaa National Park, 35 km east, is a 45-minute drive and offers a 3.5 km wooden boardwalk trail through one of Estonia's most accessible bog landscapes. The Palmse Manor, 75 km east, is the finest of Lahemaa's Baltic German estate houses, with a restored 18th-century manor house, coach house, distillery, and formal gardens. Paldiski, 50 km west of Tallinn, is a former closed Soviet nuclear submarine training base on a dramatic limestone peninsula — now open as an unusual industrial and coastal landscape.