Tartu City Museum, Tartu, Estonia

The Tartu City Museum was established in 1955 for collecting, studying and displaying the objects connected with town history as well as other sources. The permanent exhibition “Dorpat. Yuryev. Tartu”, staged at the Tartu City Museum in 2001, is a museological interpretation of the history of Tartu. Also the exhibition of Tartu peace treaty of 1920 is updated to be a permanent.

The museum building itself is a Classicist style structure built as a town palace in 1790. The building is popularly called Catherine´s House. The legend has it that Empress Catherine II made a short stay there. However, this legend is not true.

Reference: Tartu City Museum, Wikitravel

User Reviews

Tanel Karja (2 years ago)
Suurepärane saal esinejatele, huvitavad ja vahelduvad näitused.

Николай Лагуткин (2 years ago)
Небольшой, но очень интересный музей. Большая экспозиция посвященная Тартусскому договору и образованию независимой Эстонии.

Kaja Kivisikk (2 years ago)
Tutvu linna ajalooga....

Maussie InTheBaltics (3 years ago)
Tartu linnamuuseum (Tartu City Museum), located in the centre of town, in the suburb of Ülejõe, is a grand building from the late 18th century. The building stands out for its interior, including a hall in Louis XVI Early Classical style. It is a small museum with entry fee 4euro per person, interesting for those studying or curious about the history of Tartu, it has original artifacts and the beautiful hall which can be hired for events ...it would make a beautiful reception venue for a small bijoux wedding or special event or birthday.....See it @ least once.....~ : )

Hans Damen (4 years ago)
Not a top attraction, but a nice place to spend an hour or so.

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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