Tallinn is two towns inside one wall.

01 Two Towns, One Wall

Almost all of Tallinn's old town fits into an afternoon's walk, yet it was never made from a single piece. Above, on a hill of limestone, sits Toompea: the upper town, home to the lords, the nobility and those who ran power. Below, at the foot of the hill, spreads the lower town, that of the merchants and craftsmen who made Tallinn a prosperous Hanseatic port between the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries. For centuries they were not the same place: each had its own rules and its own government, and they were only merged administratively in the nineteenth century. Two streets named after legs connect them —Pikk jalg, the 'long leg', and Lühike jalg, the 'short leg'— along with a gate tower that was locked at night. To go from one to the other was not a stroll: it was to change worlds.

02 The Wall You Can Still Touch

Of the 2.4 kilometres of wall that once ringed Tallinn, almost two remain, and with them a score of towers that still draw the city's outline. This is no reconstruction for the camera: you can lay your hand on the limestone and walk stretches of the parapet. The tallest artillery tower, 38 metres high, is called Kiek in de Kök, which in Low German means 'peek into the kitchen': from the top, the guards could literally see into the kitchens of the houses below. At the northern end, beside the old sea gate, a broad, squat tower is known as Fat Margaret. The names, more than the figures, tell you how defence was lived here.

03 The Merchants' Square

If Toompea was the town of command, Town Hall Square —Raekoja plats— was the heart of the other: the town of those who bought, sold and governed themselves. It is presided over by the Town Hall, finished around 1404 and the only surviving Gothic building of its kind in northern Europe. Since 1530 a weathervane in the shape of a guardian, Vana Toomas, 'Old Thomas', has turned atop its spire, and the city took it as a symbol. Around it, the guild houses —that of the merchants' Great Guild among them— remind you that here power came not from a castle but from the ability to trade.

04 What Tallinn Leaves You

What stays with you from Tallinn is not a monument but a gesture: going up and coming down. When you reach the Kohtuotsa viewpoint at the top of Toompea and see the red roofs of the lower town packed inside the wall, the logic of the place lands at once: two towns that were never one, watching each other from different heights. Over those medieval bones Estonia has added, in recent decades, a new layer —that of the most digital country around it— but the shape is still the one from back then. You leave remembering the facades less than the feeling of crossing an invisible border each time you changed level.