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From the environs of Town Hall Square the most obvious goal is Toompea (from the German, Domberg, meaning "Cathedral Hill"), the hill where the Danes built their fortress after conquering what is now Tallinn in 1219. According to legend Toompea is also the grave of Kalev, the mythical ancestor of the Estonians. The most atmospheric approach is through the sturdy gate tower - built by the Teutonic Knights to contain the Old Town's inhabitants in times of unrest - at the foot of Pikk jalg (Long Leg). This is the cobbled continuation of Pikk, the Old Town's main street, and climbs up to Lossi plats (Castle Square), dominated by the incongruous-looking Alexander Nevsky Cathedral (Aleksander Nevski Katedraal; daily 8am-7pm). This gaudy, onion-domed concoction, complete with tacky souvenir shop, built at the turn of the last century for the city's Orthodox population, is an enduring reminder of the two centuries Tallinn spent under the rule of the Russian tsars. At the head of Lossi plats is Toompea Castle (Toompea Loss), on the site of the original Danish fortification. Today's castle is the descendant of a stone fortress built by the Knights of the Sword, the Germanic crusaders who kicked out the Danes in 1227 and controlled the city until 1238 (when the Danes returned). The castle has been altered by every conqueror who raised their flag above it since then; these days it wears a shocking-pink Baroque facade, the result of an eighteenth-century rebuild under Catherine the Great. The northern and western walls are the most original part of the castle, and include three defensive towers, the most impressive of which is the fifty-metre Tall Hermann (Pikk Hermann) at the southwestern corner, which dates from 1371. Toompea Castle is now home to the Riigikogu, Estonia's parliament, and is therefore out of bounds to the public, but nearby a couple of towers that formed part of the Old Town fortifications are accessible. A narrow archway in the medieval walls just south of the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral leads to the ironically named Virgins' Tower (Neitsitorn) which was once a prison for prostitutes and is now home to a cafe/bar. A little south of here on Komandandi tee is the impregnable-looking Kiek-in-de-Kok tower dating from 1475, whose name means "look in the kitchen" in Low German. Kiek-in-de-Kok now contains a museum (Tues-Fri 10.30am-5.30pm, Sat & Sun 11am-4.30pm; 10EEK) devoted to the history of Tallinn fortifications, with all exhibits labelled in English. From Lossi plats Toom Kooli leads north to the Toomkirik/St Mary's Church (Tues-Sun 9am-5pm; English-language leaflet 10EEK), the city's understated Lutheran cathedral, originally a wooden church built here by the Danes soon after their arrival in Tallinn. This was replaced by a stone building and named a cathedral in 1240, though the church's present appearance is the result of a 1686 rebuild. Consequently, the cathedral's exterior is hard to pin down stylistically, the Gothic lines of the nave and tower softened by the addition of Baroque side chapels and a spire. The interior is worth dropping in on to admire the fine tombs and the ornate seventeenth-century pulpit by Christian Ackerman, who also carved many of the 107 coats of arms of noble families which adorn the white walls of the vaulted nave and choir. The interior also offers an interesting insight into the social divisions of the church's original congregation; while normal people sat in the pale green pews, local notables had glass-enclosed family boxes to enable them to keep their distance from the hoi polloi. A stone's throw from the Toomkirik, in a peppermint green neo-Renaissance palace, is the Estonian Art Museum , Kiriku plats 1 (Eesti Kunstimuuseum; Wed-Sun 11am-6pm; 10EEK), housed here temporarily pending the construction of a new building in Kadriorg park. This small museum, tracing the development of art in Estonia, displays a range of works from conventional nineteenth-century studies of Tallinn and portraits of peasants in traditional costume to twentieth-century paintings heavily influenced by European artistic trends like Expressionism.
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