Photo by flickr user simone.brunozzi
Tallinn's Old Town, which grew up during the Estonian capital's golden years as a major Hanseatic port, is straight from a fairytale: a jumble of old fortifications and winding cobbled streets lined by merchants' houses painted in jelly bean colours and pierced by church spires and onion domes. But it's no Disneyland. Though small, this is a youthful, dynamic, Western-looking city determined to make up for lost time trapped, until 1991, behind the Iron Curtain. Many government ministers and entrepreneurs are well under thirty and like their Finnish neighbours across the Baltic Sea, Estonians have embraced technology, with a paperless e-government and so many wifi areas that you can even sit in the park with your laptop and connect to the internet. Trendy new bars and restaurants open every week, and as for hotels, the number has increased so rapidly, including five star establishments, that there's now a surfeit of beds. Still, during the white nights of summer it's best to book well in advance. Standards, so far, remain reasonably high and the best hotels reflect both the character of Tallinn's Old Town and the Estonian predeliction for clean Scandinavian lines and cutting edge technology. You'll be hard pressed to find a badly kept room at any price range: Estonians pride themselves on tidiness and it's reflected in their pristine hotels. See which one takes your fancy. The order by which the hotels are listed bears no reflection on our preference.
Written by Gabriele Civiliene
