HOT: History of Tartu & Free walking tours

04/07/2025

Estonia’s cherished Song Celebrations take place under the famous arch at the Tallinn Song Festival Grounds – but how was the arch built?

03/07/2025

On July 1, Canada Day was celebrated in Tallinn. Canadian-Estonians who are in Tallinn for both the global Estonian cultural festival ESTO and the Song and Dance Festival, celebrated the occasion in typical Canadian style – with a hockey game. While most Canadians can't imagine life without hockey...

02/07/2025

03/02/2024

You know how they say: "Vastlakukkel is a dish best served cold 🥶" or not?

Last week on the way to Tallinn, Vastlakukkel was found in one of the gas stations. We considered it a sign to figure out how this delicious bun appeared in Estonia 🇪🇪

Read new article by Vana Lugu team (checkout story), and how it used to be served 🍲, figure out how it ended Liberty time in Sweden ( ), and what maximum number of buns it's recommended to eat 🍞🍞🍞🍞🍞🍞🍞🍞🍞🍞🍞🍞🍞

Link to article: https://www.vanalugu.com/post/the-infamous-bunspiracy-how-a-bun-usurped-the-monarchy-in-sweden-and-appeared-at-the-table-of-eston

20/01/2024

Estonia is blooming with tech-AI-[insert-your-word-to-impress-investor] businesses - , , . Next week, there's business event sTARTUp Day 2024 , where one can come and see hundreds of businesses flourishing in the Baltic and worldwide. But before , there was 🍻

The beer tradition arrives with Germans from Nother Crusades, and its production was something that you should have rights to. Gladly, in a few centuries, capitalism came, and Tartu became a heavily competitive market with crazy stories of competition, lawsuits, drama, divorces & lovers ☕

In 1800, in his early 30s, Barthold Joachim Hesse, baltic-german, opened the first privately owned brewery in Tartu. He had a stable business, but around the 1820s, Joachim passed away, and Dorpat faced a huge problem - the absence of a good beer 😧

Historical problems require historical solutions, so Tartu municipality invited Justus R. Schrammi. Why? His mother, Christina, owned the best brewery in Tallinn. In 1822, he opened small brewery. But to scale, you need money. Back then, you could find investors. You could also marry a 17-year-old orphan with an annual income of 15,000 silver rubles 👀 In 1827, using his wife's money, Justus rented the former gunpowder cellar in Toomemägi Hill as his lager cellar and started construction of a brewery on Rüütli Street. At the same time, Hesse's widow sold the brewery to a tradesman, Alexander D. Musso, who 1831 built new beer production premises behind the Town Hall, between Jaani Street and Toomemägi. There were other breweries: Pärtels brewery on the current Illegaard yard, a Kütman factory, a Livonia factory in Ülejų, and a Gambrinius in Supplinn

If you wonder about the tradition of drinking alcohol in Pirogov Park came to be - here you're 😌

By the end of the century, Tartu had become a proper beer town with six operating breweries 🏭 It all culminated with their acquisition by Tivoli and construction of a magnificent red brick brewery complex on Tähtvere Hill in 1894-1896, most of which was preserved & owned by , designed by Reinhold Guleke.

💬 More tea & rumors below

10/01/2024

It is always good to have something warm in these colds, like a Chimney 🔥 In the 1960s, a tall heating plant on Turu Street started to bring warmth to thousands of Tartuvians.

Time and demands change, and in 2014, this Chimney was ordered to go to final rest 🫡 Around the same years, Street art in Tartu and global warming were booming. Old Chimney - colossal, old, dangerous, soviet era construction with protected and surveillance area around it - what could be a more delicious place to put graffiti on for bold artists? 🍰

It seems that in 2014-2015 "Full solar is in our reach". The author is unclear, but some rumors (Facebook groups) hint at 👀👀👀

But it was not it as the rise of machines is coming... On a warm day in 2017, the existing graffiti received a stunning neighbor - a 30m tall girl holding a tree in her hands. And it was all done by robots 🤖

Yes, done, but not planned, designed, and organised. Mihkel Joala ( ), an Estonian inventor, has created a robotic painter to produce murals (100m) tall. According to him, Chimney Graffiti was a massive scale prototype testing! Well, we still believe it was a step in the rise of the machines 😱 Nevertheless, a massive and now important piece of Tartu and World History.

That's why we love Estonia; it is so far ahead that even Robots create street art.

More plants & less chimneys 🌿

P.S. if you know any cool stories about chimney from chimney working time -please share in comments as beloooww 🌝 We love tea!

23/12/2023

Jõulud (Christmas) is around the corner, and we want to talk about public Christmas trees in Estonia 🎄

At the beginning of the 20th century, it was more common to put tree at home (photo 1) and ice skating rings were all around Tartu ⛸ (p. 2 - Botanic garden). No trees on Squares as we have them now (p.3 - Tartu, p.4 - Tallinn) The first mention of a public Christmas tree in Tartu is in 1929 .ee newspaper (p. 3). It was co-organised and co-financed by city and Mr. Zimdin, wealthy man from Tartu and it was lit 🔥(metaphorically). Electric lights, orchestra with music and celebration, the author describes the atmosphere of joy in the article (photo 6 - 1938)
Tallinn didn't really accept tradition and only started to put up public trees from 1935. Pretty sure they got jealous of happy faces of Tartuvians 😏

But, we have to give Tallinn a credit - there's a beautiful legend that first decorated public tree was installed in Tallinn back in 1441, by ... The Blackheads, a merchant-military brotherhood, who got their trade rights after... well, let's leave it for another time 😅 The Blackheads brotherhood, full of unmarried young men heard the call of Pope Eugine V "to fest & share in the winter - the harshest time of the year". They picked up some 🍻 and some more🍻🍻 , and food, they took an "unde bom" that was inside the house, and they marched to the main square, had a festive with citizens, and made it lit (literally) 🔥🔥🔥 In the third year, 1444, one of the houses nearby square got burned, soooo no more burning trees openly! But the next year, they started to put "closed fire" on the trees - and that's how the tree lights appeared on the trees.

What happened in reality? Read comments 💬