The city of Tallinn was historically known by the German and Swedish name Reval. It is the oldest capital in Northern Europe was put on the map for the first time by Arabian geographer al-Idrisi in 1154. Tallinn’s Old Town is included in the UNESCO World Heritage List as one of the best-preserved medieval town centres in Europe. It boasts a town wall with 26 defence towers, the Dominican St. Catherine’s Monastery founded in 1246, the 600-year-old Gothic Town Hall, the world’s oldest functioning pharmacy on the Town Hall Square and the 159 metres high Oleviste Church which was the highest structure in the world in the 16th century. Toompea Hill and the towers of Oleviste Church and the Town Hall offer breathtaking views over the Old Town. Toompea Castle, built in the 13th and 14th centuries, is the seat of the nation’s parliament and there flies Estonia’s “first flag” on top of Tall Hermann’s Tower.

Tallinn has been sacked, pillaged and bombed so many times over the centuries, it's a wonder anything from the past survives at all. First there were the invading Danes, then the Teutonic Knights, the Swedes, the Russians, the Nazis, and the Soviets. But the Estonian capital has in fact retained more remnants of its past, and in a more complete state, than the majority of European cities. Tallinn's charming old town, with its kilometres of winding cobblestone streets and storybook medieval houses, is the most obvious example. Other parts of the city are virtual museums of other eras. The Nőmme suburb is a trip back in time to the 1930s, when Estonia was developing fast during its first period of independence; in Kadriorg, you can almost picture Czarist-era aristocrats strolling through the tree-lined streets and garden parks. A less likely attraction is the vast, ungodly Lasnamäe apartment district, which captures the Soviet version of suburban paradise in all its horrifying glory. As time has passed and as the bitterness about Moscow rule has somewhat subsided, things Soviet, like Lasnamäe, have almost become exotic.

While the city remains a living museum, it has also been modernizing at breakneck speed, urged on by a new moneyed class anxious of Estonia, who, for better or worse, want to leave their own mark for posterity. This is especially evident in the city centre, where development has been proceeding at a head-spinning pace. New buildings are going up by the month, and old ones are being gutted and refurbished almost daily. Developers have even begun to reconstruct the few sections of the old city that were bombed by Soviet forces in 1944, the surest sign yet that history is being consigned to the textbooks and that progress is now taking precedence.