Culture Kilometre from Old Town Tallinn to Kalamaja

AMAZING TALLINN

Estonia is positively surprising — this is how Estonians describe their own country. Estonians are confident that this is a destination like no other which we heartily agree.

We found that walking around Tallinn is a joy. Now that we covered the Old Town on our own ( see here) we wanted to discover some of the other neighbourhoods around in our second day.

Tallinn has a great seaside walk from the Old Town until Kalamaja… it’s called the Culture Kilometre although it’s a bit longer around 2 km.

It’s a special walk with plenty of historical and industrial vibes from different eras along the seaside. It gave us a completely different perspective away from the old town’s touristy atmosphere. Although most of it has changed after 2011 when Amazing Tallinn was the Culture Capital of Europe, the Culture Kilometre is still worth the time to walk and discover. Today only a small part of the original walkway exists as the seaside area is undergoing major redevelopment.

The official starting point of Tallinn Culture Kilometre is located by Linnahall car park right at the harbour. It’s only a 5 minute walk down from the Old Town in front of the Tallinnk Spa Hotel.

Keep going until you reach the Patarei Prison and Sea Fortress on the right. This imposing seaside complex is a good place to peek into the Soviet era prison life in all its misery, although now they do not let people in anymore.

Originally opened as a sea fortress in 1840, later functioning as Russian army barracks, and from 1920 onwards as a high security prison under several regimes until 2004, the place has been left practically untouched since.

If you are into cinema and enjoy movies of Tarkovsky, it’s good to note that he shot some of the scenes from Stalker around these sites.

At Sea Plane Harbour (Lennusadam), the exhibitions in the historical seaplane hangars are exciting to see and the outdoor exhibition area with all the wind in your hair, accommodates icebreakers, ships and canons. You can still see the Tallinn ice breaker ship. The museum has a good a café with maritime books.

Lennusadam Tallinn Culture Kilometre walk

Once we saw the Kalamaja Cemetery Park (Kalmistupark), on our left we were ready for a break. This park is a former cemetery and today a large public park with children and families having fun and enjoying the sun.

Kalamaja is a fantastic neighbourhood — we were pleasantly surprised- again! More on Kalamaja as part of Amazing Tallinn and what to do in the next post.