One of the charms of compact Tallinn, a city with just under 400,000 inhabitants, is how easy it is to get about on foot. Capital of a country that is larger than often thought (comparatively, Estonia is bigger than Denmark and smaller than Ireland), it pulls in most of the tourists, the foreign investment and the visiting artists and performers from around the world. Traditionally the haunt of foreign aristocrats, nobles, politicians and administrators, the limestone plateau of Toompea sits in splendid isolation on the southwest side of the Vanalinn (Old Town), with spectacular views of the sea and the city below. The medieval network of streets was preserved despite the devastating fire of 1684, and the craggy stone walls of the old fortress give Toompea its distinctively solid look. Shaped like a kidney bean, the historic All-Linn (Lower Town) lies east of Toompea and extends north from Harju street in the south along Pikk (Long) street to the port. Wedged between the wider streets is a higgledy-piggledy scrawl of cobbled lanes, many edged with pastel-coloured medieval merchants’ houses. Its focal point at all hours of the day and night is the Town Hall square. The Old Town is ringed by a rough limestone city wall, dotted with 15th- and 16th-century red-tiled towers. Beyond the wall, bastions and a former moat have been transformed into rambling, lush parkland. The newer city surrounding the Old Town (comprising Toompea and All-Linn), is known rather prosaically as Kesklinn (City Centre). The southern section stretches from west of Toompea, down to Liivalaia with its shiny new office blocks, and across to the Estonia Theatre and Opera. Much of the area was bombed during the 2nd World War but there are pockets of wooden housing and plenty of handsome turn-of-the-last-century and pre-war buildings, among them the elaborate Bank building where Estonia’s independence was declared in 1918. The port area, north of the Old Town, is one of Tallinn’s fastest- growing neighbourhoods. The engines driving its expansion are the harbour, from where hydrofoils speed north to Helsinki, and the passenger port, where cruise ships dock. Mere puiestee (Sea avenue) leads south alongside the Old Town from Rotermanni, a former factory district, to Viru väljak (Viru square), which is dominated by the compellingly hideous Viru Hotel, the city’s top hotel for Western tourists in Soviet days. Although it still has a gritty feel – industrial wastelands and modern buildings hastily erected in the anything-goes chaos of the 1990s – the area is decidedly on the up, with some of the city’s trendiest bars, clubs and restaurants. This leafy seaside suburb east of the city centre grew up around the mulberry-coloured Baroque Palace built by Peter the Great as his summer residence. The area had its heyday as a resort in the 19th-century, following the creation of the Tallinn-St Petersburg-Moscow railway. One of the chief charms of the area today is the intricately carved wooden residential architecture, much of which has been painstakingly restored. Famous for its white-sand, pine-fringed beach, Pirita, to the northeast, is also home to a yachting complex and resort built for the 1980 Moscow Olympics. You can rent a boat on Pirita River, which joins the Bay of Tallinn here, or wander in the wooded Metsakalmistu (Forest Cemetery), where leading Estonian political and cultural figures are buried. The Television Tower with its “Galaxy” restaurant is a wonderful relic of the Soviet era, worth a visit for a whiff of the past as well as the views from the observation platform. Kalamaja (“Fish house”), Tallinn’s oldest suburb, lies besides the sea northwest of the Old Town. Like so many neighbourhoods of wooden houses, it fell into neglect under Soviet rule and until recently had the reputation of being poor and slummy. It’s now up and coming and has a vaguely bohemian feel. Northwest is Kopli, with pockets of wooden architecture, industrial sites, some fascinating Stalinist architecture and a beach. The grimmer bits fizzle out as you approach the cliffs of the Rocca al Mare open-air museum, an assembly of reconstructed rural architecture overlooking Kopli Bay. At opposite ends of the city from each other, these two areas offer a perfect example of the contrast between things Soviet (Lasnamäe’s cheaply built, grey, prefabricated tower blocks, where everyone lives on top of each other) and things Estonian (Nõmme’s pretty wooden villas, with fences and gardens providing longed-for privacy). Lasnamäe, east of Kadriorg, is bisected by the Narva highway, route one to Russia; forested Nõmme is southwest of town on the way to party central, the coastal town of Pärnu.
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Tallin - £7.99
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