Best of Tallinn Shore Excursion

Meeting by the ship

Meeting by the ship. The start time of the tour is given approximately and will be adjusted depending on your ship arrival time. The exact meeting time will be specified on your confirmation letter.

Transfer to Toompea

A fifteen-minute coach ride to the upper town, past the parks that ring the old walls and the medieval castle on Toompea hill

Toompea and Alexander Nevsky Cathedral

A drive up to Toompea, the limestone hill the Danes fortified in 1219 and the seat of every power that has ruled Estonia since. The castle keeps its medieval towers, among them Tall Hermann, where the national flag is raised at sunrise; the pink baroque wing facing the square was built for Catherine the Great in the 1770s and now houses the Riigikogu, the Estonian parliament. Across from it stands Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, finished in 1900 in a late-19th-century revival style with five onion domes and eleven bells, the largest of them weighing 15 tonnes.

Dome Church

A walk through the quiet lanes of the upper town to the Dome Church, the oldest church in mainland Estonia, founded in the 13th century and rebuilt many times, with a baroque spire added in 1779. Inside, the walls carry the coats of arms of the Baltic German nobility and the tombs of admirals and governors.

Viewing platforms

The viewing platforms on the edge of Toompea, where the whole lower town lies below: red-tiled roofs, church spires, the ring of medieval wall towers and the ferries crossing to Helsinki behind them.

Lower Old Town

The descent to the lower town, which merchants rather than nobles built. You see Gothic merchant houses with their hoisting beams still in place, the town wall with the towers that survive from a ring of forty-six, and two great churches: St Nicholas, gutted by Soviet bombing in March 1944 and now a museum holding Bernt Notke's Danse Macabre, and the Holy Spirit Church, whose painted clock of 1684 is the oldest in the city.

Town Hall Square

Town Hall Square, the heart of the town for eight centuries. The Town Hall, completed in 1404, is the only Gothic town hall left standing in northern Europe, and the weathervane of Old Thomas has turned on its spire since 1530. On the corner of the square, the Town Hall Pharmacy was already trading in 1422 and is among the oldest pharmacies in Europe still in business.

St Catherine's Passage and Viru Gate

St Catherine's Passage, a narrow lane running along the wall of the former Dominican monastery, where craftspeople keep open workshops for glass, felt, quilting, ceramics and jewellery. The walk ends at the Viru Gate, whose two ivy-covered towers of the 14th century are the postcard entrance to the old town.

Free time

Two hours of your own in the old town for lunch and shopping

Return to the ship

The coach takes you from the city centre back to the port