Medieval Tallinn in depth

We start at the foot of Raekoja plats in front of the original 1404 town hall, the only surviving Gothic town hall in northern Europe, then loop past the Church of the Holy Spirit and the Great Guild, along Pikk to the Three Sisters merchant houses with the hoist beams still in their gables, and back along Lai. It is a short walk, with time to stop and look.

Toompea is a different city from the Lower Town: the seat of bishops and barons, stone houses behind iron gates, and the Dome Church. On its slope stand Kiek in de Kök and the Maiden Tower, both part of the Tallinn City Museum, and in the Lower Town you walk a section of the town wall between its towers. All of it runs on normal opening hours. Sunset from the Patkuli viewpoint, then dinner in the Old Town.

Kalamaja is where the working city lived: railwaymen, fishermen, shipyard families. The wooden houses date from the 1880s onward and are painted in ox-blood and ochre. Telliskivi Creative City, next door, fills the old railway locomotive works. Since 2007 it has been Tallinn's creative quarter: about 300 studios, shops and small companies, some 2,000 people at work, more than 800 events a year and around 1.5 million visitors. We finish at Maiasmokk on Pikk, a historic café with a marzipan room, for a short marzipan-painting workshop.