Estonia

Guides

Estonia packs an extraordinary amount of variety into a small country. Tallinn's Old Town — one of the best-preserved medieval city centres in Europe — is the obvious starting point: its 13th-century limestone walls and watchtowers are almost entirely intact, and within them lie cobblestone lanes, Gothic merchant houses, a town hall that has stood since 1322, and a hilltop fortress (Toompea) with panoramic views over terracotta rooftops to the Baltic. But Estonia has a great deal more than Tallinn. Tartu, the country's intellectual capital, is a compact university town with some of the best contemporary museums in the Baltic states and a creative energy that owes as much to its ancient academic tradition (university founded 1632) as to its new cohort of start-ups and cultural institutions. The national parks are exceptional: Lahemaa, on the north coast, combines Soviet-era manor houses, ancient fishing villages, and coastal bog landscapes in one of the Baltic's most distinctive protected areas; Soomaa, in the southwest, floods every spring to create the “fifth season” — a vast seasonal wetland navigable only by canoe. Estonia's islands — Saaremaa, Hiiumaa, Muhu — are a world apart, with windmills, medieval bishop's castles, a meteor crater, and a pace of life that seems detached from the mainland entirely. Estonia is also the birthplace of Skype and the world's most digitally advanced state; it has pioneered e-governance, digital voting, and a borderless e-Residency programme that has made it the most talked-about small country in the world of technology policy.

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