Tartu Old Town

Tartu is Estonia's second city and its intellectual one - the university dates from 1632, and the town has been shaped by it ever since. The old town is not medieval in the way Tallinn's is: fire in 1775 and the war in 1944 took most of it, and what stands now is largely late eighteenth-century classical rebuilding, which gives Tartu a lighter, more open feel.

What you actually see

• Town Hall Square - a wedge of pastel facades sloping down to the Emajõgi, with the pink town hall at the head and the Kissing Students fountain in front of it.
• The Barclay House - visibly leaning where its foundations settled into the old moat.
• Toomemägi - the cathedral hill above the square, with parkland, the old observatory and two arched bridges.
• The cathedral ruin - brick walls, part of which were rebuilt into the university museum, with the white-columned main university building at the foot of the hill.

When to go

September to May is term time, when the town has its actual character. Late June to August is quieter and warmer, with the river terraces open and most students gone. Winter has short days but a good Christmas market and an ice rink on the square.

Honest expectations

If you have just come from Tallinn and are expecting the same density of medieval fabric, Tartu will read as ordinary at first. Its appeal is atmosphere, museums and student life rather than architecture you photograph.

Distances are walkable but Toomemägi is a real hill, and the paths ice over in winter.

Nearby

The Estonian National Museum and AHHAA science centre are both in the city. Taevaskoja and Lake Peipus are each about an hour out.