"Welcome traveller !" a Tallinn County Travel Page by TheaIren

This is my hometown. I have lived here for 26 years.
Five years ago I moved to the country. I have nicely combined city-country life As I come to work in Tallinn every day.

TALLINN has a population of 470,000, which is about 1/3 of entire Estonian population. It fronts a bay on the Gulf of Finland, a 45km coastline making almost the half of the city border. Tallinn is dominated by Toompea, the hill on which the city is centered.
Tallinn was first marked on a map in 1154 by the Arabian geographer al-Idrisi ( who had never been to Tallinn, but had probably heard about it from travelling merchants ). After the Danes conquered the stronghold in 1219 it was re-named Tallinn ( though to mean " Danish town ") and a castle was set on Toompea.
Tallinn became a member of Hanseatic league in 1285. By the mid - 14th century Tallinn had become one of the largest towns in the Baltic countries with 4,000 people. About that time Tallinn ( called Lindanise at that time )
had the tallest building in the world. St.Olafs church. If you approach to Tallinn from sea you can enjoy wonderful city panorama. And you can imagine what effect the tallest building might had to people in 13th century.

Between 1219 and 1360 Danes and Germans swapped Tallinn and Northern Estonia for couple of times. From the 1360s up to the beginning of Livonian War, during which Tallinn passed to Sweden, Tallinn was in its heyday-trade and crafts flourished and the city grew rapidly. In 1710 Estonia was annexed to the Russian Empire and remained under Russian rule for two centuries. In late 19th century Tallinn became a chief port of the Russian empire and railway was built from St.Petersburg. By WWI Tallinn had population of over 100,000.
Tallinn was damaged very badly in WWII, but after the war city started to expand very fast. Now the renovation in Old Town still goes on but most of the medieval buildings are in good condition.

Piazza Laboratore

I highly recommend you to take the walk on Laboratooriumi street. It's off the beaten bath from tourists and I always find something interesting in there. This is a street where houses need badly renovation but maybe because houses have not in the best condition in there, the street has atmosphere which is worth to experience.

Second place I definately recommend is Towers Square. There is a park outside of the medieval citywall where you can see most of preserved citywall towers. A lot of nice niews are guaranteed.