Tallinn Medieval Old Town

About this pack

A 5-day premium trip to Tallinn, Estonia, taking in Toompea Hill, Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, St. Olaf's Church and Kadriorg Palace.

Inside the Tallinn Medieval Old Town trip

Tallinn Medieval Old Town begins on Toompea, the limestone hill at the centre of the city whose German name, Domberg, gave Tallinn's old town its "Cathedral Hill." Rising 20 to 30 metres above the surrounding streets and first emerging as an island from the Baltic Ice Lake some 10,000 years ago, Toompea has held a fortified settlement since at least the 10th or 11th century, when it protected the harbour and marketplace below; the hill fort recorded in Henry of Livonia's Chronicle of the Livonian Crusade under the name Lindanise fell to the Danish king Valdemar II in the summer of 1219, whose crusaders built a new castle, the Castrum Danorum, on the site. The much-rebuilt Toompea Castle standing today combines the walls and towers of that medieval fortress with a Tsarist-era governor's palace and the Estonian parliament building of 1922, its Pikk Hermann tower flying one of Estonia's most recognised national symbols.

Overlooking the same Castle Square is the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, the largest cupola church in Tallinn, built between 1894 and 1900 to a design by the architect Mikhail Preobrazhensky in the Russian Revival style, during the period when Estonia formed part of the Russian Empire. Dedicated to the grand prince of Kiev and Russian Orthodox saint Alexander Nevsky, the cathedral rests on a base of Finnish granite beneath five gilded onion domes, its eleven bells cast in Saint Petersburg — the largest weighing about 16 tonnes — and its three gilded, carved wooden iconostases painted on copper and zinc plates by artists working in the same city. Left to fall into disrepair during the Soviet period, when churches across Estonia received little state support, the building and its interior have been carefully restored since Estonia regained independence in 1991.

Rising higher still above the old town is St. Olaf's Church, at 123.7 metres the tallest church building in Estonia, its observation platform set 60 metres up the tower. A church is believed to have stood on the site before the 12th century, built by Scandinavian merchants and dedicated to the canonised Norwegian king Olav II Haraldsson, patron saint of seafarers, with the earliest documentary mention dating to 1267, when Queen Margaret of Denmark granted parish rights to a Cistercian convent. Originally Catholic and then Lutheran after the 16th-century Reformation, the church passed to a Baptist congregation in 1950 under Soviet administration, and between 1944 and 1991 the Estonian branch of the Soviet KGB, headquartered nearby, used its spire as a radio tower and surveillance point — a striking footnote to a building whose tower has also been struck by lightning roughly ten times and burned down three times across its recorded history.

The route closes at Kadriorg Palace, an 18th-century Petrine Baroque residence whose Estonian and German names both translate as "Catherine's valley." Built between 1718 and 1725 to designs by the Italian architect Nicola Michetti, and constructed by Gaetano Chiaveri and Mikhail Zemtsov, the palace was commissioned by Peter the Great of Russia for his wife Catherine following the 1710 siege of Tallinn during the Great Northern War, though Catherine herself showed little interest in the seaside property after Peter's death in 1725. The palace's great hall survives with its original stucco decoration bearing Catherine's initials, and its gardens — laid out by the gardener Ilya Surmin with fountains and a multi-level "mirage garden" echoing Peter's own palace at Strelna — today surround a building that has served in turn as a provincial governor's residence, an art museum and, from 1929, a presidential summer residence, closing out a route that has moved from a Danish crusader stronghold through a Tsarist-era cathedral and a record-holding church spire to an 18th-century royal garden by the sea.

• Toompea — Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0
• Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, Tallinn — Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0
• St. Olaf's Church, Tallinn — Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0
• Kadriorg Palace — Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0

Text adapted from the linked articles under CC BY-SA 4.0; edited for length.

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