Tallinn: what to see, where to stay and how to get around
Tallinn was two towns on one hill for four hundred years. Down here was the lower town, which belonged to the German merchants of the Hanseatic League — the guilds, the warehouses, the town hall and the money. Up on Toompea were the bishop and the knights, and the gate between the two was locked at night from both sides. The lower town ran its own courts and would not let the nobility in. Two hours, flat, and almost all of it is medieval.
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A short history of Tallinn
The Arab geographer al-Idrisi marked the place on a map as early as 1154. In 1219 the Danes conquered it and built a fortress on the hill, which is probably the origin of the name, meaning 'Danish town' in Estonian. In 1285 the city, then called Reval, joined the Hanseatic League, and German merchants built the old town that still stands almost intact today. In 1561 it passed to Sweden, and in 1710 to Russia. In 1918 it became the capital of independent Estonia, and from 1940 it was under Soviet rule. In 1991 Estonia regained its independence, and the old town has been a World Heritage Site since 1997.
The ten best sights in Tallinn
1Town Hall6 euros, from 1404, and the only Gothic town hall left in Northern Europe
2Town Hall PharmacyFree, documented from 1422, and still selling medicine
3St Olaf’s Church5 euros, 232 steps up the tower, and it was once the tallest building in the world
4Niguliste Museum12 euros, in a bombed-out church, and the Dance of Death is in it
5Holy Spirit Church4 euros, and the clock on the front is from 1684
6Alexander Nevsky CathedralFree, from 1900, and it was built to face the parliament on purpose
7Dome Church5 euros, the oldest church in mainland Estonia, and full of coats of arms
8Toompea CastleFrom outside, and the parliament sits inside a Danish castle of 1219
9Kiek in de Kök15 euros with the tunnels, and the name means peep into the kitchen
10Fat Margaret15 euros, walls five metres thick, and it is the maritime museum
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What is an audio walk?
Tours in Tallinn →A guide in your headphones: open the walk on our site, walk from stop to stop, and at each one your phone tells its story. No guide, no group, and free. This is the first walk in Tallinn:
Free walking tours in Tallinn
The merchants’ half
Tallinn was two towns on one hill for four hundred years. Down here was the lower town, which belonged to the German merchants of the Hanseatic League — the guilds, the warehouses, the town hall and the money. Up on Toompea were the bishop and the knights, and the gate between the two was locked at night from both sides. The lower town ran its own courts and would not let the nobility in. Two hours, flat, and almost all of it is medieval.
- Viru Gate · The two round towers are only the forward gate — the main gate behind them was pulled down in the 1880s to let trams through, and these were kept because they were in the way of nothing. Of forty-six towers in the original wall, twenty are still standing, which is more than almost any city in Europe.
- Town Hall Square · A market has been held here since the thirteenth century, and a Christmas tree has stood on this square every December since 1441 — which makes it, by the town’s own claim, the first public Christmas tree anywhere. The stone in the middle of the square is the only point from which all five town spires are visible at once.
- Town Hall Pharmacy · First mentioned in writing in 1422, already with a third owner by then, and it has traded on this spot ever since — one family, the Burcharts, ran it for ten generations. It sold marzipan as a medicine for heartache, along with burnt bees, powdered unicorn horn and dried hedgehogs, and the back room shows them.
- Town Hall · Finished in 1404 and the only Gothic town hall still standing in Northern Europe. The weathervane on the spire is a soldier called Old Thomas who has been up there since 1530; the original was shot full of holes over the centuries and is now indoors, and the one turning in the wind is the third copy.
- Great Guild Hall · The Great Guild took only married German merchants who owned property, and it effectively ran the town — its members elected the council. The unmarried ones had the Blackheads’ guild up the street, and Estonians could belong to neither. The building of 1410 now holds the history museum.
- St Olaf’s Church · The spire reached about a hundred and fifty-nine metres in the sixteenth century, and for some decades it may have been the tallest building in the world — which also made it the best lightning rod on the Baltic. It has been struck at least ten times and burned down three. It is now a hundred and twenty-four metres, and you can climb it.
The hill the rulers kept
Toompea is a limestone block forty-five metres above the lower town, and whoever has ruled Estonia has sat on it — the Danes from 1219, then the Teutonic Order, then Sweden, then Russia, and now the parliament, which meets inside the same castle. The Russian empire put an Orthodox cathedral directly facing it in 1900 to make a point, and the point is still being made. Two hours, and the climb is the only hill in the city.
- Danish King’s Garden · On the fifteenth of June 1219 the Danish king was losing a battle here when, the story goes, a red cloth with a white cross fell out of the sky and the Danes rallied. That cloth is the Dannebrog, the oldest national flag still in use, and the fifteenth of June is Denmark’s flag day — named after a battle fought on this ground.
- Toompea Castle · The Estonian parliament sits inside a castle the Danes began in 1219, behind a pink baroque facade that Catherine the Great had put on the front in 1773 — so the building is Danish at the back, Russian at the front and Estonian inside. Tall Hermann, the tower at the corner, flies the flag, and it goes up at sunrise.
- Alexander Nevsky Cathedral · Finished in 1900 and deliberately placed so that it faces the castle where the Estonian assembly met, at the highest point of the hill, as part of a Russification policy. In 1924 the new republic passed plans to demolish it and then did not; it is now the main Orthodox cathedral of the country.
- Dome Church · The oldest church on the Estonian mainland, begun by the Danes in the 1220s, and the walls inside are covered with a hundred and seven carved coats of arms of Baltic German noble families — put up over three centuries, and the whole social order of the province readable in one room.
- Kohtuotsa platform · The view from here — red roofs, the spires, the port and the ferries behind — is the one on every photograph of Tallinn, and on the wall beside it somebody has written the sentence "The times we had". It has been repainted by the city after each round of graffiti and is now effectively permanent.
- Kiek in de Kök · Low German for peep into the kitchen, and the name is literal — the tower was tall enough that the guards on top could see down the chimneys and into the kitchens of the houses below. Nine cannonballs from the siege of 1577 are still stuck in the outside wall, left where they hit.
Wood, concrete and the singing
Outside the wall the city is wooden — Kalamaja, built for factory workers from the 1870s, where almost every house is timber with a stone stairwell between the halves so a fire could not cross. Beyond it are the industrial ruins the Soviet period left behind, and beyond those the field where, in September 1988, about three hundred thousand Estonians — a quarter of the entire nation — stood and sang. Three hours, and a tram helps.
- Telliskivi · A railway repair works that closed after 1991 and sat empty for fifteen years, taken over from 2009 by studios, bars and a photography museum. The street art on the walls is commissioned rather than illegal, and the Saturday flea market in the yard is where the city sells its own things.
- Kalamaja · The name means fish house, and it was the fishermen’s village before the factories came. The houses are a type found nowhere else: two wooden halves with a limestone stairwell built between them, because the insurance rules of the 1870s required a fireproof core — so the stairs are stone and everything else is pine.
- Seaplane Harbour · Three concrete domes built in 1916 for the Russian navy’s seaplanes, and they were the first large reinforced-concrete shell domes in the world — each one thin enough that the engineers were not entirely sure they would stand. Inside is the submarine Lembit of 1936, which served until 1955 and can be walked through.
- Linnahall · Built for the 1980 Moscow Olympics, because the sailing events were held in Tallinn, and the concrete steps were meant to carry crowds over the road to the sea. It closed in 2009, is listed as a monument, has no money for repair, and people still climb it to sit on the roof at midnight.
- Kumu Art Museum · A Finnish architect won the competition in 1994 and the building took twelve years, cut into the limestone bank at the edge of Kadriorg park. The floor to find is the one on Soviet-era art, which hangs the official socialist realism and the unofficial work made at the same time in the same rooms.
- Song Festival Grounds · The song festival has been held since 1869 and the choir can be thirty thousand strong. On the eleventh of September 1988 about three hundred thousand people came here — roughly a quarter of all Estonians — and sang songs that had been banned, and the independence declaration was read from this stage. No one was armed and nothing was broken.
Getting to Tallinn and getting around
- Tallinn Airport · Four kilometres out, and tram 4 reaches the centre in fifteen minutes
- Balti Jaam · The station, and the market hall behind it is the good part
- Bus Station · Buses to Riga, Tartu and St Petersburg, and tram 2 or 4 to it
- Passenger Port · Ferries to Helsinki every two hours, and the crossing is two hours
Cheap eats in Tallinn
Eight counters where Tallinn eats standing. Black rye bread is the base of everything — dense, sour, and Estonians abroad have it posted to them. The two things to find are sprats on black bread with egg, and kama, a cold drink of roasted barley, rye, oat and pea flour whisked into buttermilk, which sounds improbable and is the national taste of childhood. Drink Vana Tallinn, a dark rum liqueur made here since 1960.
- Balti Jaama Turg · Open 9 to 7, and the food hall runs later
- III Draakon · About 4 euros for soup and a pie, and cash only
- Rataskaevu 16 · Estonian cooking, about 20 euros a main, and book two weeks ahead
- Vanaema Juures · A cellar of grandmother’s cooking since 1991, and about 18 euros
- Olde Hansa · Candlelit medieval theatre, expensive, and the bear is on the menu
- F-hoone · In Telliskivi, big plates for about 12 euros, and open all day
- Põhjala Tap Room · A glass is about 6 euros, and the smoked meat is the food
- Depoo · A yard of food containers by the station, and nothing over 10 euros
Museums in Tallinn
- Kumu Art Museum · 12 euros, closed Mondays, and free on the last Friday
- Seaplane Harbour · 18 euros, three 1917 concrete domes, and a submarine you walk through
- Niguliste Museum · 12 euros, and the organ concerts are on Saturday afternoon
- Estonian History Museum · 15 euros, in the 1410 guild hall, and the cellar is the best part
- Fat Margaret · 15 euros, the maritime museum, and the roof terrace is included
- Kadriorg Palace · 8 euros, and the kitchen wing is a separate ticket
- Open Air Museum · From 10 euros, 80 buildings in a wood by the sea, and horses
- Maarjamäe Palace · 10 euros, modern history, and the Soviet statue park is behind it
Nature and day trips near Tallinn
Half of Estonia is forest and a fifth of it is bog, and both begin within half an hour of the capital. Tallinn itself has a two-kilometre sand beach at Pirita and a seventy-hectare park behind the palace, and the first national park the Soviet Union ever created is an hour east.
- Kadriorg Park · Free, tram 1 or 3 to Kadriorg, and twenty minutes to walk
- Pirita · Free, two kilometres of sand, and the water is shallow and cold
- Viru Bog · Free, an hour east in Lahemaa, and best at dawn
- Lahemaa National Park · Free, 747 square kilometres, and manor houses between the bogs
- Jägala Waterfall · Free, the widest in Estonia, and in February you can walk behind the ice
- Botanic Garden · 8 euros, and the palm house is the answer to a Baltic January
- Paljassaare · Free, 20 minutes from the centre, and bring binoculars
- Keila-Joa · Free, a six-metre waterfall and a restored manor, and 30 minutes west
Things to do in Tallinn with kids
- Seaplane Harbour · 18 euros, a submarine, a seaplane and flight simulators
- Tallinn Zoo · 15 euros, and the polar bears are the other reason
- TV Tower · 15 euros, 314 metres, and there are glass hatches in the floor
- Open Air Museum · From 10 euros, 80 real houses, and horse carts in summer
- Kiek in de Kök tunnels · 15 euros, Swedish bastion passages, and 8 degrees down there
- Pirita beach · Free, shallow for a long way out, and a playground behind it
- Masters’ Courtyard · Free, small workshops, and the chocolate is made in front of you
- Noblessner · Free, a sea pool in summer, and ice cream along the quay
Live music in Tallinn
- Song Festival Grounds · Free to walk in, and the next festival is in 2030
- Von Krahl · The independent theatre and bar, and gigs in the back room
- Telliskivi · Several venues in the yard, and nothing starts before ten
- Fotografiska · A photography museum with a bar on top, and open till late
- Põhjala Tap Room · In a submarine factory, and there is live music at weekends
- Niguliste organ · From 10 euros, Saturday and Sunday afternoons, and the acoustics
- Linnahall · Closed, but the roof is where the city drinks at midnight in June
- Rotermann Quarter · Bars and restaurants in converted mills, and quiet after midnight
Holy places in Tallinn
- St Olaf’s Church · 5 euros, 232 steps, and shut in bad weather
- Dome Church · 5 euros, the oldest on the mainland, and 107 noble coats of arms
- Alexander Nevsky Cathedral · Free, 1900, and the eleven bells include a sixteen-tonne one
- Holy Spirit Church · 4 euros, and the painted clock outside is from 1684
- Niguliste Museum · 12 euros, a bombed church kept as a museum, and the Dance of Death
- Pirita Convent · 4 euros, by the beach, and bus 1A or 34A
- Maarjamäe Memorial · Free, a Soviet monument and a victims’ memorial on one site
- Kiek in de Kök · 15 euros, and the cannonballs of 1577 are in the outside wall
Frequently asked questions about Tallinn
What is there to see in Tallinn?
The top sights in Tallinn are Town Hall, Town Hall Pharmacy and St Olaf’s Church. The full list on this page has 10 sights, each with a photo and a short note.
How many days do you need in Tallinn?
Three to four days are enough to see the best of Tallinn without rushing, including at least one walking tour.
Is there a free walking tour in Tallinn?
Yes. sleepntrip has 3 free audio walks in Tallinn, with no guide and no group: your phone tells the story at every stop. The first one: The merchants’ half.
How do you get to Tallinn and get around?
The main ways are Tallinn Airport, Balti Jaam and Bus Station. Full details are in the transport section on this page.
Where to stay in Tallinn, and for how much?
sleepntrip shows only rooms in Tallinn that meet nine conditions: a good location, high guest scores, cleanliness, and a price of up to $80 a night for two. Pick your dates and see what is free.
Looking for a hotel in Tallinn for your dates?
Only rooms that meet nine conditions, up to $80 a night.