7 Photo Spots in Tallinn, Estonia (including a Lost Place)

In 2018, I could finally tick off another city that I had on my travel bucket list for a long time. I packed my carry-on compliant Osprey backpack and spend 5 days in Tallinn, Estonia.

Tallinn is famous for its medieval charm and city center. On one day, I made a day trip to see the alleged Ghost Town Viivikonna, that I wrote about earlier.

Know before you go

Traveling to Tallinn is pretty straightforward. You can reach it by plane and by ship. The famous historic city center is pretty small, and you can cross it on foot in 30 minutes if you take a leisurely walk.

Public transportation is excellent in Tallinn. Busses and Trams circle the city center and will take you to the more distant parts of the city, like the abandoned Pirita Convent.

I'd recommend looking for a hotel inside the old town or near one of the main gates because you'll find many bus and tram stops near these gates.

Usually, Tallinn was quite crowded during the day, but suddenly, around 6-7 pm, it looked like all the people suddenly vanished, and Tallinn's streets were almost empty.

And if you're planning a trip to Tallinn, here are seven photo spots you shouldn't miss.

Pirita Convent

Pirita Convent was a former monastery that was in use between 1407 and 1575 and abandoned shortly after.

Today, you can visit the beautiful and abandoned monastery and its surrounding medieval cemetery. You can easily reach it from the city center by bus.

The abandoned Pirita Convent in Tallinn

To be able to photograph the massive church ruin and the surrounding medieval cemetery and to fit both into a frame, I used the Moment Fisheye Lens. Without the fisheye lens, that wouldn't have been possible.

The Port Gate

From the port gate, you can walk to the port and the abandoned Linnahall concert hall. The port gate together with other gates like the Viru Gate are great photo spots during the day and the night - though I prefer the night because there much fewer people were strolling around.

The Port Gate in Tallinn at night

For this photo, I combined two photography techniques, which are leading lines and framing. In this photo, I frame the leading line or use the leading line to guide the eye to the frame. Whichever way you want to view it, it's a great photo spot that can give you a glimpse of medieval Tallinn because of the lack of cars and many other modern civilization artifacts. Just imagine that there are candles inside the street lights, will you?

Kopli Lines

Kopli Lines is a wholly abandoned district in the north of Tallinn. There used to be communal houses for workers of the Russo-Baltic Factory in Tallinn. After World War II, the area was abandoned, and the mostly wooden houses began to decay.

I don't know if there's still much left there as of 2020. When I visited the area in 2018, I saw some demolition trucks and workers that started to take down the abandoned and unstable houses.

Remains of an abandoned house at Kopli Lines in Tallinn

By the way, can you see the red truck behind the trees in the lower right corner? If not, then, most likely, because I desaturated the reds in Lightroom Mobile and later added them again for the house using selective adjustments. I often use this technique of desaturation to hide unwanted objects in a photo.

Linnahall Concert Hall

Linnahall is, or better was, a multi-purpose venue in Tallinn right at the seaside, that closed its doors for good in 2010. Since then, it is maintained to prevent it from decay.

The hall is an excellent example of former Soviet monumental architecture. It's just huge. The part you can see in the photo below is only the path to the hall. Can you spot the person?

Linnahall in Tallinn

To convey such an object's size, a well-known photography technique is to place objects of a known size next to them. Most of the time, that's done by capturing a photo with a single person.

City Walls

These ancient defense walls that surrounded the city center are still mostly intact. And if you've some time, you can even walk both inside and on top of these walls.

Ancient City Walls in Tallinn

Alexander Nevsky Cathedral

I think this is the second Alexander Nevsky Cathedral I've visited. There's also one in Sofia, Bulgaria.

Alexander Nevsky Cathedral in Tallinn

As the place was quite crowded, I didn't want to put up my big tripod. I just used a small bench in front of the church as a tripod by putting my Gorillapod for iPhone on it and took a long exposure with my iPhone and Slow Shutter Cam App to capture the moving clouds that, at this time, were moving perfectly horizontally through the scene.

St. Catherine's Passage

There's no better place to get a feeling of medieval Tallinn than at St. Catherine's Passage and the surrounding area.

St. Cathrine’s Passage Tallinn

Back in 2018, there was no iPhone 11 and no night mode to take low noise and well-exposed photos with iPhone at night. Back then, ProCamera Low Light Mode was my preferred way for night photography with iPhone - and it still is for a straightforward reason: It works with all three lenses of the iPhone 11 Pro while iPhone night mode camera only works with the standard 1x lens.