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Tallinn, the medieval, mobile-mad capital of Estonia, owes its fortunes and seemingly endless misfortunes to its strategic location on the eastern shore of the Baltic Sea, where northern Europe and the Orient collide. The city has been moulded by a curious combination of Teutonic efficiency and Russian extravagance. Although its Old Town is often described as ‘fairy-tale’, there’s not a hint of tweeness in the architecture: the soaring spires of the churches and the narrow, Hanseatic merchants’ houses, leaning perilously into the streets and washed with watery limes, yellows and pinks, are unfussy, even austere. The ‘sleeping beauty’ feel comes from the forest that encircles the Old Town, softening the edges of the rugged city walls. Seagulls wheel above the rough grey limestone castle of Toompea before spiralling down past russet turrets and the cubist jumble of red-tiled roofs to the silvery Bay of Tallinn, where cruise ships sound their horns before edging out towards Stockholm, Helsinki or St Petersburg.
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