Tallinn is one of the few European cities that has completely preserved its historical layout
Tallinn has borne different names over its centuries-long history. The Danes called it Reval, the Russians Revel, and even earlier – Kaleva, Kalevin and Kolyvan, Germans and Scandinavians called it Lindanise. From this word, the most beautiful name of Tallinn remained in Russian tales – Ledenez. «Lenta.ru» went to the capital of Estonia and found out what lies behind the different names.
On the station square of the Estonian capital, small bunches of violets tied with bourgeois ribbons are sold. The salty wind from the sea overpowers the railway smells. Seagulls chirp cheerfully. It seems that trains arrive here not at a station, but at a port.
Before setting off to see the sights, you need to have breakfast. Of course, in the Old Town.
Medieval Breakfast
Narrow winding streets with rounded cobblestones lead in circles and zigzags. The sky, squeezed between stone walls, stretches overhead like a narrow blue ribbon. The Old Town is truly old, it is literally mossy Middle Ages. All cafes and bars were closed with wooden shutters or iron curtains: too early. There is not a soul on the streets, and it seems that behind the small and deep windows of the houses – also no one. Beautiful, but eerie, like in a fairy tale.
Finally, above the rooftops appears a mustachioed little man with a flag – Old Thomas. This cute symbol of the city, working as a weather vane on the town hall tower, is the best landmark for walks around Tallinn.
Town Hall Square – the main square of the Old Town – is not very large. It is hard to imagine how the market and craft rows fit here – it seems that horse-drawn carts would have difficulty passing each other. But that is how a medieval city was arranged: all the main buildings should be located close together, under reliable protection, under the eyes of the city authorities, and on the outskirts – the least valuable objects. Tallinn is one of the few European cities that has completely preserved its historical layout, and this is from the 14th-15th centuries. Most of the buildings of Old Tallinn date from the same period. The living Estonian Middle Ages is included in the UNESCO World Heritage list, and Town Hall Square is recognized as the best-preserved in Northern Europe.
The early traveler is warmly welcomed by the open doors of the pastry shop "Maiasmokk" ("Sweet Tooth"). The oldest cafe in Estonia appeared in this house on Pikk Street in 1864. There the traveler will get a cup of very black coffee, warm small buns, marmalade and Estonian national delicacy – gingerbread cookies. All this in exquisite historical interiors. After such a breakfast, Tallinn becomes even more attractive and heartfelt.
Present Continuous Time
To get to know the city, you need to set aside more time. For some reason, many who come to Tallinn for the first time have the illusion that a day, well, at most two days is quite enough to get acquainted with such a small town – just over 400 thousand inhabitants. The historical center, according to some guidebooks, can be walked length and breadth in just three hours. Both the guidebooks and some eyewitnesses who visited this wonderful city at a gallop, trotted through, but never really saw it, are shamelessly lying.
In Tallinn, you need to surrender to the flow of local time, and it is special here – slowed down, with pauses and a kind of reverse, when events either rewind slightly back, or mix with others that happened here decades or even centuries ago. Have you heard jokes about hot Estonian guys? Well, there you have it. The guys have nothing to do with it, it's the city – and the local time.
Long Leg to Long Hermann
The higher the sun, the more the Old Town fills with people, mainly groups of staring tourists and guides hypnotically reciting dates. It's time to go uphill, to the top of Toompea.
The Upper and Lower Town are connected by two paths: the narrow paved street Pikk Jalg – Long Leg and the stair-street Lühike Jalg – Short Leg, starting behind a large forged door. Tallinners joke about this that their city is lame on one leg.
Long Leg runs along the mighty fortress wall with powerful towers, it still looks impressive today, and once the Reval fortress was one of the most reliable fortification structures in Europe. All the towers of the Old Town have their names. Crowned with the national blue-black-white tricolor (sea, earth and hope) bears the name Long Hermann. The tallest is called Kiek in de Kök – Peek into the Kitchen. Within the Old Town, from it, probably, one could really see what someone had for lunch today. The Neitsitorn – Maiden Tower – was once a women's prison: girls of easy virtue and brides who did not want to marry their unloved suitors were sent there. Another prison tower was for men. They say that both former prisons are still inhabited by ghosts.
The artillery tower next to the Great Sea Gate is called peacefully and domestically – Fat Margaret. Now there is the Estonian Maritime Museum, and earlier Fat Margaret was the storage of all the state's weapons and another prison where prisoners of war were kept.
A walk along the fortress wall with stops at each tower will last until lunch. Don't be lazy to find the famous Tallinn cafe Chocolats de Pierre, they serve handmade truffles, pies and God knows what other incredible goodies. On Vene Street – Russian Street, you need to turn into the gateway of house No. 6, in the depths of the courtyard find a small staircase down and a similarly small door. The upper door jamb above the dwarf entrance to the cafe is upholstered with soft tapestry to save the foreheads of visitors of normal human height. Inside – a mixture of delightful aromas and countless most unexpected things from different eras. You will be fed and watered, and also for free you will gape at museum treasures.
Little House of Peter the Great
After a hearty lunch, you'll probably want to lie down on the grass. The nearest grass is in Kadriorg Park. This is the name of the summer palace and the park around it – a gift from Peter the Great to his wife Catherine. The emperor, who loved grandiose projects, turned the barren rocky shore into truly Versailles-like splendor. In honor of Catherine, the new building was named Katharinenthal, but under the influence of the Estonian language, the long word gradually shortened to Kadriorg.
Peter himself did not live in the palace because he suffered from agoraphobia and spent his life huddled in small rooms. Having settled his wife in luxurious apartments, he arranged for himself an ordinary house of quite non-royal size; it is called Peter's little house, not a house. Now there is a museum there, and one of the oldest: the little house was declared a national treasure as early as 1806 by Alexander I, and this year the museum turns 210 years old.
The exhibition is rich: most of the items and furnishings are genuine, the personal property of the emperor. In the tsar's bedroom stands Charles XII's chest, which he abandoned to the victor's mercy when he fled from Poltava. Peter was proud of this war trophy and kept his valuables there. But Peter's bed raises many doubts. After all, the tsar, as is known, was over two meters tall, and the bed is like a teenager's. But museum staff claim that the bed is real; it's just that Peter Alekseevich had a soldier's habit of sleeping half-sitting, so he ordered a size so that his feet would rest against the footboard.
From the same staff, you learn that Peter personally planted rowan trees in Kadriorg Park and installed such beautiful and technically perfect fountains that tourists from abroad specially came to see them. After the emperor's death, his niece Anna Ioannovna ordered the best fountains to be moved to Peterhof. But those that remain are also very good.
Now in the royal Kadriorg there is a branch of the Estonian Art Museum.
Commandant's House
You should set aside a little time to visit the house of Abram Petrovich Hannibal, the great-grandfather of the great Russian poet. In former times it was called Hannibal's House; now it is diplomatically called the Commandant's House. The dark-skinned ancestor of Pushkin served for ten years (1742–1752) as commandant of the city of Reval – the capital of Russian Estonia, now Tallinn – the capital of independent Estonia. There is no museum in the building – though there is a memorial plaque. Nevertheless, the building itself, dating from the late 17th century, deserves attention, not only for its modest architecture. Both the Russian tsar Peter and the Swedish king Charles XII visited here, but still the main hero, whose spirit undoubtedly remained in these places, was the Russian general of Ethiopian origin, a personality outstanding in every respect.
The true story of the tsar's godson Abram Petrovich is not as fairy-tale romantic as it is shown in the film about how Tsar Peter married off his Moor. The life of the Russian black man was full of Shakespearean passions and dramatic events.
After the emperor's death, his black confidant Abram, considered a conduit of Peter's reformist ideas, was sent to serve far from the capital – to Siberia, to the Tobolsk fortress, so as not to disturb minds. Then Tsarina Anna Ioannovna took part in the fate of the disgraced Moor and transferred him to the city of Pernov (Pärnu).
Abram Petrovich arrived in Estonia not alone, but with his young wife Evdokia, who was given to him in marriage against her will. She had a fiancé, naval lieutenant Alexander Kaisarov, and the unhappy girl even wrote a letter to the empress asking her to intervene in her fate and order Abram to abandon his claims to her hand, “because the Moor is not of our race.” But the empress did not intervene, and the matter ended in sin. Forced to submit to her parents' will, Evdokia gave herself to her former fiancé before marriage and nine months later gave birth to a white girl for Abram. For her black husband, this became undeniable proof of her infidelity. In a fit of jealousy, he beat Evdokia, locked her in a shed, and kept her on bread and water for several weeks. The offended Moor also suspected that his wife and her lover wanted to poison him. Evdokia went slightly mad from grief, sometimes confessing everything – both infidelity and the intention to kill her husband – and sometimes denying everything. The law at that time was extremely harsh regarding adultery, and the poor woman faced hard labor.
The court examined the case for a long 20 years, and meanwhile Hannibal obtained permission to marry another woman – Christina Sjöberg – and effectively became a bigamist. In 1742, he was appointed commandant of Reval and took his family from Pärnu. However, documentary evidence remains that he sent money monthly for the needs of his imprisoned first wife and received reports on her health. The divorce from Evdokia was formalized only in 1753, after which she was forever confined to a monastery. And Hannibal lived happily with his second wife for 50 years and fathered three daughters and five sons, one of whom – Osip – became the grandfather of Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin.
Incidentally, the white girl who caused the scandal was sent away from home by Hannibal and never seen again, but he regularly sent her gifts, provided a good education, and a rich dowry.
Old Tallinn is stone, tiled, and cobbled, but it is not dead or cold. It is spiritual – this may seem overly pompous, but perhaps it is closest to the truth. Everything here seems alive, not least because almost every city stone has its own name: not only streets, but also intersections, staircases, houses, hills, old pharmacies, and cannons on the fortress wall. Not to mention the numerous old cafes, carefully preserving their history enclosed in their names.