Tallinn City Museum, Tallinn, Estonia

The building of the City Museum dates from the 14th century. The oldest record in the real estate register dates from 1363. The permanent exhibition provides an overlook of Tallinn’s history through centuries – beginning with prehistory and ending with Estonia’s regaining of independence in 1991.

Various sectors of medieval society are explained using a combination of texts, artefacts, life-sized models and sound effects. High-quality displays on the upper floors are devoted to 20th-century life, its turbulent wars, Soviet occupation, and finally Estonian independence.

User Reviews

Marie Laure Dut (2 years ago)
I discovered the history of the city. A good museum for children. Playful museum and at the same time rich of history

Rémi Ninon (2 years ago)
Nice museum in Tallinn. Really interesting sections with different topics like the history of Tallinn at medieval times or the way they got their independance from the ex URSS with historical videos. If you have some time ahead of you while visiting, you should stop there, there's a lot to learn :)

Candy S (2 years ago)
Very nice museum, all the staffs are nice, helpful and informative. Worth to visit.

Oana Sucigan (2 years ago)
Awesome museum. The lady at the entrance was very nice and passionate about the city's history

George On tour (2 years ago)
We introduce the history of the city from its establishment to this day. The cellars of the medieval merchant house stores ceramics, porcelain, and metal. The top floors host exhibitions on the history of the city. The rococo style party room introduced the luxury items and portraits of aldermen and wealthy townspeople. The annual exhibition 'One Hundred Years of Daily Life' introduces the century in terms of everyday life and shows how life and the city have changed. When booked beforehand, we organise tours in Estonian, Russian, English, Finnish, and German. Tallinn City Museum opened the first virtual exhibition in Estonia on the Google Arts & Culture platform, allowing users to explore the museum.

Featured Historic Landmarks, Sites & Buildings

Photo from Flickr, copyright Frans.Sellies

Historic Site of the week

Kromeriz Castle and Gardens

Kroměříž stands on the site of an earlier ford across the River Morava. The gardens and castle of Kroměříž are an exceptionally complete and well-preserved example of a European Baroque princely residence and its gardens and described as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The first residence on the site was founded by bishop Stanislas Thurzo in 1497. The building was in a Late Gothic style, with a modicum of Renaissance detail. During the Thirty Years' War, the castle was sacked by the Swedish army (1643).

It was not until 1664 that a bishop from the powerful Liechtenstein family charged architect Filiberto Lucchese with renovating the palace in a Baroque style. The chief monument of Lucchese's work in Kroměříž is the Pleasure Garden in front of the castle. Upon Lucchese's death in 1666, Giovanni Pietro Tencalla completed his work on the formal garden and had the palace rebuilt in a style reminiscent of the Turinese school to which he belonged.

After the castle was gutted by a major fire in March 1752, Bishop Hamilton commissioned two leading imperial artists, Franz Anton Maulbertsch and Josef Stern, arrived at the residence in order to decorate the halls of the palace with their works. In addition to their paintings, the palace still houses an art collection, generally considered the second finest in the country, which includes Titian's last mythological painting, The Flaying of Marsyas. The largest part of the collection was acquired by Bishop Karel in Cologne in 1673. The palace also contains an outstanding musical archive and a library of 33,000 volumes.

UNESCO lists the palace and garden among the World Heritage Sites. As the nomination dossier explains, 'the castle is a good but not outstanding example of a type of aristocratic or princely residence that has survived widely in Europe. The Pleasure Garden, by contrast, is a very rare and largely intact example of a Baroque garden'. Apart from the formal parterres there is also a less formal nineteenth-century English garden, which sustained damage during floods in 1997.

Interiors of the palace were extensively used by Miloš Forman as a stand-in for Vienna's Hofburg Imperial Palace during filming of Amadeus (1984), based on the life of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, who actually never visited Kroměříž. The main audience chamber was also used in the film Immortal Beloved (1994), in the piano concerto scene.

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Historic Site of the week

Kromeriz Castle and Gardens

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