Tallinn

Why Tallinn works

Tallinn's Old Town is ringed by nearly two kilometres of surviving medieval city wall and 26 defensive towers, one of the most complete fortification systems left standing in Europe, and it earned the whole district UNESCO World Heritage status. Toompea Hill, the upper town, holds Alexander Nevsky Cathedral's onion domes — a 19th-century Russian Orthodox addition that some Estonians still regard ambivalently as a symbol of tsarist rule — alongside the pink Baroque Toompea Castle, now Estonia's parliament building. St. Olaf's Church, in the lower town, was briefly the tallest building in the world in the late 16th century, its spire designed partly as a navigational landmark for Hanseatic trading ships on the Baltic. Town Hall Square, ringed by merchant houses and dominated by Estonia's only surviving Gothic town hall, hosts a Christmas market each December that locals claim (with some justification) originated the tradition of the decorated Christmas tree in a public square, dating to 1441. Tallinn's medieval charm sits alongside a very different reputation: the city is the birthplace of Skype and a genuine hub of Estonia's e-governance system, one of the most digitised in the world, where residents can vote, file taxes and start companies entirely online — a contrast the locals enjoy pointing out to visitors wandering the cobblestones.

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