Kadriorg Palace and Park

Peter the Great took Tallinn in 1710 and started building Kadriorg eight years later, naming it for Catherine. The palace is a compact pink-and-white baroque block by the Italian architect Niccolò Michetti, and the main hall inside is the best surviving baroque interior in Estonia.

What you actually see

• The facade and flower garden - a symmetrical two-storey front above a formal parterre with a fountain.
• The Great Hall - a double-height room in white stucco with heavy ceiling relief, restored close to its original state.
• The foreign art collection - Dutch, German and Russian paintings hung through the palace rooms.
• The park - oak and chestnut avenues, the swan pond and its wooden pavilion, the Japanese garden, and KUMU at the far edge.

When to go

May to June has the formal garden planted and the park at its freshest. September to October is when the oaks and chestnuts turn, and the best-looking month of the year. In winter the palace interiors carry the visit and the pond freezes over.

Honest expectations

The palace is small. From outside it reads as a large manor rather than a royal residence, and the tour is over quickly - the collection and the Great Hall are the substance, not the scale.

The park is genuinely public and busy at weekends, with joggers, prams and dogs. It is not a preserved historic garden experience.

Nearby

KUMU is a five-minute walk. The Song Festival Grounds and Pirita are further along the same coast road, and the old town is fifteen minutes back by tram.