Yesterday was a fairly nice day here in Tallinn, and with summer quickly running out I thought that I should make the most of the (limited) sunshine, and so took a walk to Kadriorg. Kadriorg is a large park area with some interesting buildings and art galleries.
The most interesting in my opinion is Kadriorg Palace (Left). It was built in 1718 by the Russian Tsar after the Russians took over from the Swedes in Estonia. Kadriorg means Katherine's Valley, as Katherine was the Tsars wife. At the time Estonia was a remote outpost, so seeing as though the emperor wasn't going to spend much time in his summer villa, he made sure it featured gardens to be open to the public. The building is now the Museum of Foreign Art.
Up until communist times, anyone who wanted to be thought of as anyone got themselves a villa at Kadriorg, and even today it remains a wealthy, leafy suburb with beautiful houses distinct form the square uniform apartment blocks more common in Tallinn.
In the spirit of an area for the rulers, in 1938 the newly independent Estonians built a presidential palace just up the road from Kadriorg Palace. The side gates with the Estonian emblem are on the left. The front itself is fairly boring compared to the Palace, though there are the stereotypical guards who change every who knows or cares when.
The latest arrival in Kadriorg Park is the new art museum, which was finished in February.
The Kumu is short for Kunstimuuseum, or Art Museum. Its a pretty cool building, and has been built into a limestone cliff. (Limestone is everywhere in Northern Estonia). It serves as the National Gallery and the Contemporary Art Gallery. I haven't been in and had a look inside as yet, though I did go to a concert there a few weeks back. It's all glass and angles as you would expect from a modern building. One of Sirli's friends Dad built it, which was apparently a pretty stressful job. He finished on the last day possible to meet the deadline, and all the financial stuff that goes along with that.
If you enlarge the picture on the left, you can see how the town is divided into two. The smaller oval on the bottom right quarter is the upper town, built on a steep hill. The rest of the built up area (mainly red roofs) is the lower town. The upper town was the home of knights and was ruled by feudal law (ie land lords, vassals etc.) The lower town ruled itself under a special law , and was full of merchants and artisans. It was this lower town that made Tallinn the important place that it was, it was a member of the Hanseatic League, a sort of medieval EU.
