Museums in Tallinn

The Applied Art Museum

The best way to get to The Applied Art Museum is to walk: it is less than 5 minutes walk from the Town Hall Square, 5 minutes walk from the Tallinn Central Railway Station and less than 20 minutes walk from the Tallinn Port. The Applied Art Museum was opened in 1980 as one of the several branches of the Art Museum of Estonia and housed in a former granary, known in old records as the grain store and storehouse. The construction of the three-storeyed granary was started in 1683 and completed most probably before 1695. The old granary, one of the most stately and monumental economic buildings in Tallinn, served as a store till the early 1970s when restoration work began. In the course of restoration some reconstructions to meet the needs of a museum were also carried out.

The collections were founded already in 1919 when the Art Museum was established. The Applied Art Museum is the only one in Estonia possessing an extensive and perspicuous collection of Estonian 20th-century professional applied art. In addition to that, there are smaller collections of 18th-19th-century Western European and Russian decorative art.

The permanent exhibition at the museum presents Estonian ceramics, book-binding art and leatherwork, jewellery, metalwork and fine glass dating from the beginning of the 20th century up to the present. In the ground-floor hall, temporary modern Estonian and foreign applied art exhibitions as well as those based on historical collections are displayed.

The Art Museum of Estonia

The Art Museum of Estonia was founded on November 17, 1919, but it was not until 1921 that it got its first permanent building - the Kadriorg Palace, built in the 18th century. In 1929 the palace was expropriated from the Art Museum in order to rebuild it as the residence of the President of Estonia. The Art Museum of Estonia was housed in several different temporary buildings, until it moved back to the palace in 1946. In September, 1991 the Kadriorg Palace was closed due to total deterioration. For the present the Knighthood House at Toompea Hill serves as the temporary main building of the Art Museum of Estonia. The exposition here was opened on April 1, 1993. In summertime the exposition introducing the classics of Estonian fine art from the 19th century to World War II is displayed here. In the rest of the year temporary exhibitions of works from the museum's own collections, but also visiting exhibitions are held. At the end of the 1970s and in the 1980s the first branches of the Art Museum of Estonia were founded. In 1995 was founded the Pedagogical Center for Children and Youths (SIKSAK). The Exhibition Hall on the ground floor of Rotermann Salt Storage was opened in 1996. Summer 2000 in restored Kadriorg Palace as a branche of Art Museum of Estonia was opened Museum of Foreign Art. At present there are eight active branches of the Art Museum of Estonia. On January 1, 2001 the collections of the Art Museum of Estonia comprised 63 344 items (medieval painting and wooden sculpture, West-European and Russian fine and applied art, national applied art, Baltic-German art, classical and contemporary Estonian fine art).

The Museum of Estonian Architecture

The exhibition halls and archives of Museum of Estonian Architecture are placed in Rotermann's Salt Storage, a magnificent industrial building near Tallinn harbour. The Museum has spacious exhibition hall of 484 square meters and two galleries of 161 square meters above it. The basement is also used for exhibitions and art events. One of the floors of Salt Storage is used by Art Museum of Estonia for modern art exhibitions. Together the Museum of Architecture and modern art exhibition hall are forming contemporary center of arts and architecture. Multicultural orientation and wide openness to international projects makes it unique in Estonia.

Estonian Maritime Museum

Originally standing a mere 300m from the sea, Fat Margaret (built 1510 - 1529) once guarded the entrance to Tallinn's busiest street. Built as apart of city defence system after incarnations as a barracks and prison, the cannon tower now houses the Maritime Museum (Eesti Meremuuseum, founded 1935). Enthusiasts can spend hours examining four floors of nautical charts, models and other paraphernalia.

Within four floors one can get a through vision of Estonian seaman and fishing history. A shipyard, craftsmanship, harbours navigation techniques and lighthouses. At the first floor there is constantly changing exhibitions. The oldest objects at the museum are fishing tools that are made of bone and horn and are from time before Christ.

The Estonian History Museum

The Estonian History Museum began to evolve in the 19th century when interest in history increased explosively. The very first private museum in Estonia grew out of a collecting hobby: Town Council chemist Johann Burchart established his Mon Faible (my weakness) in 1802. His collection is still one of the most attractive parts of present museum.

The History Museum as such was founded in 1842 when the Estonian Literary Society was established in Tallinn. The Society aimed at "studying the homeland in greater detail through its history, art, production, technology and nature" and considered the museum a means for this end. The collections were based both on collecting and donations. When the collections kept growing, it was decided to shelter them in a local provincial museum.

The Estonian Literary Society Provincial Museum was founded in 1864 and in the autumn of the same year exposition was opened to public in the rooms of the former St. Canute's Guild in Pikk Street. In 1911 the museum moved to the palace bought specially for it in Kohtu Street, on the slope of Toompea. Being the sole museum in a provincial town, it soon became the cultural centre with its exhibitions and lectures, developing the taste and attitudes of Tallinn citizens for decades.

The museum held on to its position also in the Republic of Estonia (1918-1940). Very much thanks to the Baltic-German scholars the collections kept growing. The archaeology collection that was continuously increasing should be pointed out first, but the others like that of natural sciences, archive materials and culture kept growing, too.

In 1940 when Estonia was sincorporated in the Soviet Union, big changes took place: the museum was nationalised and renamed the State History Museum of the Estonian SSR. Some of the collections were transferred to other museums. The collection of natural sciences became the basis for the Museum of Natural Sciences. In the post-war years the museum was subjected to several unjustified actions like the liquidation of the so-called harmful materials - i.e. everything connected with independent Estonia. Quite a few basic materials, however, have survived thanks to the curators' and keepers' personal enthusiasm.