Tallinn Old Town

Tallinn’s Old Town stands on a hill above the modern port, its cobbled lanes and red-roofed merchants’ houses still shaped by the 13th-century street plan. The entire district is surrounded by a continuous medieval wall with towers every hundred metres, enclosing 113 hectares of Hanseatic warehouses and churches. In 1997 UNESCO placed the Old Town on its World Heritage List for the completeness of its medieval fabric. The town survived the 20th century’s worst damage in March 1944, when Soviet incendiary bombs destroyed about one tenth of the buildings and left twenty thousand people homeless. Yet the heart of the Old Town—the Great Guildhall, the Town Hall Square, and the Dominican monastery—was rebuilt so faithfully that the original medieval character is still recognisable. Visitors walk the wall-walk between towers that rise above the rooftops, then descend to the Great Square where the Town Hall’s slender spire marks the centre. Narrow alleyways lead past the 15th-century pharmacy and the Gothic Oleviste church, while cafés spill onto flagged courtyards once used by Hanseatic merchants.