The Baltics – Day 3: Tallinn

Contrary to the gloomy predictions of the weather forecast, today was a lovely day. I began the morning at Freedom Square, where I took pictures of the column to the 1918-1920 War of Independence. Using the symbolism of this location, a large banner of Ukraine’s and Estonia’s flags hangs from the large building at the northern end of the square. Somewhat to the detriment of the message, the building houses Tallinn’s Department of Transportation and has a rating of 2.2 stars on Google Maps.

I continued past the Estonian Drama Theatre to Viru Gate, whose name I found somewhat misleading. At present, there is no gate. Rather, the name “Viru Gate” denotes two towers separated by a wide street where vendors sell flowers and souvenirs. The ex-gate is but a short walk removed from the medieval Saint Catherine Street (Katariina käik), which leads towards the centre of the medieval town: the Town Hall and the nearby Town Hall Square.

Deciding to leave the hill for later, I walked over to the northern part of the old town. This area is home to several well-preserved medieval towers, including Plate Tower and the evocatively named Fat Margaret. Most if not all towers in Tallinn, I have discovered, have names relating either to their history or to their appearance: Fat Margaret’s counterpart on the other side of the old town, for example, carries the nickname Tall Hermann. Still in the north, I waited until ten o’clock to climb Saint Olaf’s, a Baptist Church with beautiful views of the entire city. Unlike the Church of Saint Nicholas, which has a spiffy elevator, the Baptist Church forces tourists to ascend the good old manual way.

Needless to say, my acrophobia was really acting out today. At the top of Saint Olaf’s, I felt myself swaying as I began to imagine the metal platform falling and the tiles of the roof sliding off. At Saint Nicholas’, I found it quite easy to imagine the elevator plunging down the fifty metres from the observation deck, as the elevator’s walls are made of glass. Of course, the views were worth it in both cases. To the west, Saint Nicholas looks directly at the Cathedral of Alexander Nevsky, and to the north it faces the old town.

Saint Nicholas also houses two exhibitions: one on church bells and one on pilgrimages. I found the information on pilgrimages quite interesting. Just as Muslims do nowadays, medieval Christians often sponsored people to go on pilgrimages when they could not do so themselves. A richer Tallinner could, for example, leave some money in his will to sponsor a pilgrimage to Riga, Germany, or even Santiago de Compostela. However, a whole new genre of fraud arose from such arrangements, with some tricksters claiming to have made their journey without having ever gone. Sometimes they would even procure fake keepsakes from their pilgrimages, which the authorities smashed up when the fraud was discovered.

Towards noon, I finally climbed the hill, visiting the Orthodox Cathedral of Alexander Nevsky on my way to the two most popular viewing platforms in the city. I climbed down again after lunch and took the train to Kadriorg, a rich neighbourhood of Tallinn that houses the Russian-built Kadriorg Palace and the current Presidential Palace. As I learned at the former, Kadriorg was the summer residence of the Russian imperial family in the eighteenth and early nineteenth century. It only fell from grace after the completion of the railway to Crimea and the conclusion of the Crimean War. The palace contains a number of artworks, including a number of portraits of Catherine the Great and a painting by the renowned artist Ilya Repin.

Having completed my visit to the east with a quick stop by the Rusalka Memorial, I made one last trip into the centre of Tallinn. Saint Mary’s Cathedral, which was closed in the morning, was now open again, and the sun was shining onto the city’s battlements from the west. I made a visit to Toompark to the west of the old town before travelling back to my hotel and picking up my backpack. At six, I boarded the bus for Riga.