Estonians distinguish between Tallinn and Tartu with a phrase about Tartu vaim, the spirit of Tartu: where the capital handles money and government, Tartu handles ideas. It is the older city, the intellectual centre, and it was European Capital of Culture in 2024.
The university
The University of Tartu was founded in 1632 by the Swedish king Gustavus Adolphus and is the oldest in the country. Its main building, a white neoclassical block with six columns, is the visual symbol of the city. Inside, the student lock-up in the attic — where students were imprisoned for duelling, insulting professors and other nineteenth-century misdemeanours — still carries their graffiti on the walls.
The university museum occupies the ruins of the Gothic cathedral on Toomemägi hill, a striking combination of medieval brick and modern conversion.
Town Hall Square
The square slopes down towards the river Emajõgi, framed by pastel classical buildings. Its centrepiece is the fountain of the Kissing Students, which has become the city's emblem and its most photographed object. Beside it, the deliberately tilting Barclay House leans at an angle that makes Pisa jokes inevitable.
Toomemägi
Cathedral Hill is the park above the centre, with the cathedral ruins, the Angel's Bridge and the Devil's Bridge, and the old observatory used in the nineteenth century to make the first reliable measurement of a star's distance. It is the pleasant green heart of the city.
Museums
The Estonian National Museum, in a striking modern building on a former Soviet airfield runway just outside town, is the best museum in the country for understanding Estonian identity, folk culture and the twentieth century.
AHHAA is a large science centre, genuinely good and aimed at families. The KGB Cells Museum, in the basement of the building the security services used, is a short, hard and necessary visit.
Supilinn and the river
Supilinn — 'Soup Town', with streets named Bean, Pea and Potato — is a district of nineteenth-century wooden houses that was slated for demolition and has instead been restored. It is the most atmospheric corner of Tartu. Along the Emajõgi, the riverside has been redeveloped with beaches and bars, and boats run in summer down towards Lake Peipus.