About Tallinn
Text: LC Tallinn
Photographs: LC Tallinn, Web
Tallinn is the capital city of Estonia
and the oldest capital in northern
Europe. It is an ideal holiday destination if you want to combine the comforts of modern world, versatile nightlife and luxurious adventures with rich
cultural scene and historic settings.
With half a million citizens, Tallinn is
hardly a world metropolis. However,
short distances and low traf?c are advantages to cherish. Medieval Tallinn
Old Town, one of the best preserved
Hanseatic town centres in the world
and a UNESCO World Heritage site,
is just a short walk away from the city
business centre with its skyscrapers,
modern hotels, luxurious restaurants
and shopping malls. In 2011, Tallinn,
along with Turku in Finland, was the
cultural capital of Europe.
Many new visitors don’t realise that
Tallinn, with all its Medieval charm, is
actually the meeting point of medieval
heritage and high-tech. It leads the
world in free, public wireless Internet
access, it’s the birthplace of Skype,
and it’s home to the best developed
e-government system anywhere.
In fact, the tech-savvy locals are so
used to services like electronic banking and mobile parking that they can’t
imagine life without them. Tallinn is
also the number one city in the world
which is almost fully covered with
Wireless Internet. You can use your
laptop almost everywhere around the
city.
One of Tallinn’s strengths is the sheer
variety of choices it offers when it
comes to nightlife, and a visit here
isn’t really complete without sampling
this side of the city’s culture. Whether
you’re the type who dresses up for the
opera, dresses down for a rock show
or just wants to dance the night away,
you’ll ?nd plenty for your soul in Tallinn.
Fortunately, exploring Tallinn by night
is extremely easy thanks to the fact
that most of the interesting destinations are concentrated in Old Town,
within easy walking distance of one
another. If you have the energy and
pace yourself carefully, you can visit
a dozen different places in a single
night.
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