Palmse Manor

For seven hundred years the Estonian countryside was organised around Baltic-German manor estates, and Palmse - seat of the von der Pahlen family from 1677 to 1923 - is the estate where that world can still be read whole. It was the first manor complex in Estonia to be fully restored, and it anchors the inland half of Lahemaa National Park.

What you actually see

• The main house - a dignified baroque block from the 1780s, furnished as it would have been in the family's time.
• The service buildings - stables, a smithy, a bathhouse, storehouses and a distillery, the estate having made part of its money on vodka.
• The orangery and swan pond - the ornamental core of the grounds.
• The park and tavern - landscaped grounds running off into forest, with the old tavern by the gate now feeding visitors.

When to go

May to September has everything open, the park green and boats on the pond. December brings Christmas markets and period events in the main house. The rest of winter the park is open and handsome under snow, while the interiors run reduced hours.

Honest expectations

The interiors are restored rather than original - the house was emptied in the twentieth century, and what stands in the rooms is period furnishing assembled to match. It is convincingly done, but it is a reconstruction.

Weekends in July bring coaches. Early mornings have the park to themselves.

Nearby

Sagadi and Vihula manors are within fifteen minutes, and the trio makes the classic Lahemaa manor circuit. Viru bog and the coast villages are in the same park.