Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
of Helsinki and see all that flesh on-screen. The TV tower was recently refurbished and
opened to visitors.
• Go back through the arch, turn immediately left down the narrow lane, turn right (onto
Toom-Rüütli), take the first left, and pass through the trees to...
Kohtuotsa Viewpoint:
On the far left is St. Olav's Church, then the busy cruise
port and the skinny white spire of the Church of the Holy Ghost. The narrow gray spire
farther to the right is the 16th-century Town Hall tower. On the far right is the tower of
St. Nicholas Church. Below you, visually trace Pikk street, Tallinn's historic main drag,
which winds through the Old Town, leading from Toompea down the hill (from right to
left), through the gate tower, past the Church of the Holy Ghost, behind St. Olav's, and out
to the harbor. Less picturesque is the clutter of Soviet-era apartment blocks on the distant
horizon. The nearest skyscraper (white) is Hotel Viru, in Soviet times the biggest hotel in
the Baltics, and infamous as a clunky, dingy slumbermill. Locals joke that Hotel Viru was
built from a new Soviet wonder material called “micro-concrete” (60 percent concrete, 40
percent microphones). Underneath the hotel is the modern Viru Keskus, a huge shopping
mall and local transit center, where this walk will end. To the left of Hotel Viru, between it
and the ferry terminals, is the Rotermann Quarter, where old industrial buildings are being
revamped into a new commercial zone.
