Toompea Castle and Tall Hermann Tower

Toompea Castle at Lossi plats 1a crowns the limestone hill above Tallinn's Old Town and has been the seat of power in Estonia for most of the last eight centuries. In 1219 Danish forces under King Valdemar II captured the earlier Estonian hill fort and built a stone fortress here, giving Tallinn its name, often explained as Taani linn, the Danish town. After the Danes sold their holdings, the Livonian Order rebuilt the site in the late 13th and 14th centuries as a square convent-style castle with four corner towers, of which Tall Hermann (Pikk Hermann) is the best preserved. The tower rises about 45.6 m and was raised to its present height in the 16th century; the Estonian national flag is hoisted on it each morning at sunrise, a ritual restored after independence. Under Swedish and later Russian rule the castle served as the seat of governors. In the 1770s, during the reign of Catherine the Great, the northern medieval range was replaced by the pink Baroque palace front that visitors see today from the square. Since 1922 the building has housed the Riigikogu, Estonia's parliament, and the interior was adapted in the 1920s with an expressionist assembly hall inside the old walls. The courtyard, with the tower, a lion statue marking the castle's emblem and views over the red roofs of the Lower Town, is open to the public, while the parliament interior can only be seen on pre-registered guided visits arranged through the Riigikogu website. The mix of limestone medieval bastions, Baroque façade and modern legislative function makes the complex a compact lesson in Estonian statehood across the Danish, Livonian, Swedish, Russian and independence eras. It stands in the Harju County capital within a short walk of the Dome Church and Alexander Nevsky Cathedral.