Experience the best of Tartu

The University of Tartu, founded in 1632 under the Swedish crown, shapes the town, and students fill its cafés, riverside paths and bookshops. Raekoja plats, the Town Hall Square, is the centre, with the pastel classical town hall and a fountain of two kissing students. Beside it stands the Art Museum, whose crooked walls lean visibly out of true.

Toome Hill rises next to the square and holds the roofless brick ruins of a medieval cathedral, whose choir now houses a university museum, with shaded paths winding up through the trees. The Estonian National Museum occupies a long, low building at Raadi, on land that was once an airfield. East of town, Lake Peipus is a vast shallow lake on the Russian border, with villages of Old Believers who grow onions.

Peipus fish, smoked or dried, and the pickled onions of the lakeside villages are local tastes, alongside Estonian rye bread and farm cheese. Long light evenings bring the town out onto the riverbank in summer, while winter is quiet and snowy.