Tallinn Town Hall

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Tallinn Town Hall
Tallinn Town Hall
General information
Architectural style	Gothic
Town or city	Tallinn
Country	Estonia
Construction started	13th century
Completed	1404

The Tallinn Town Hall (Estonian: Tallinna raekoda) is a building in the Old Town (Vanalinn) of Tallinn (Reval), Estonia, next to the Town Hall Square. The building is located in the south side of the medieval market square and is 36.8 metres (121 ft) long. The west wall is 14.5 metres (48 ft) in length, and the east is 15.2 metres (50 ft).^[1] It is a two-storey building with a spacious basement.^[2] It is the oldest town hall in the whole Baltic Sea region and Scandinavia.

The weather vane "Old Thomas" (Estonian: Vana Toomas) on the top of the town hall's spire, that has been there since 1530, is one of the symbols of Tallinn. The height of the tower is 64 metres. Tallinn Town Hall is located on the Town Hall Square, where the streets Kullassepa street, Dunkri street and Vanaturu kael lead. One of the shortest streets of Tallinn is Raekoja tänav, which is located behind the Town Hall.

The town hall was built by what was then the market square. The town hall square got its current length in the 1370s. Covered with a board roof in 1374, the town hall was probably a single-decked stone building with a basement. The attic was used as a storeroom. The façade of this long and narrow building is now a rear wall of the arcade, where some of the simple statuary framed windows from this time are still visible.^[3]

A town hall with a huge meeting room was firstly mentioned in a real estate book in 1322 as a consistorium, which had a giant warehouse (cellarium civitatis) for the time.^[1] Some walls in the eastern part of the modern town hall and seven windows in the basement and on the ground floor have remained from that time.^[1] In 1364, it was called a playhouse (teatrum) and in 1372 a town hall (Rathus).^[4]

The town council controlled the town's political, economic and even partially parlour action. The town hall was often a courthouse and a place to introduce goods; sometimes it was even used as a room for theatre, as is evident from the word teatrum. Therefore, it was very important to be placed in the heart of the town and to look representative.^[5]

Although the city administration worked in the town hall until 1970, it still holds the role of a representational building of the city administration and welcomes visitors as a concert venue and a museum where visitors can learn about the centuries-long historical and architectural value of the Tallinn Town Hall.^[6] In conjunction with the Tallinn Old Town, the town hall has been on the UNESCO world Heritage Sites list since 1997.^[7] In 2004, the Tallinn Town Hall celebrated its 600th birthday.^[6]

In 2005, the Tallinn Town Hall received a high recognition – second prize in the category of conservation of Architectural Heritage for the revival of the last surviving Gothic Town Hall in Northern Europe and the exemplary revealing of all the historical layers of this icon of the great European tradition of municipal power. The prize was presented to Elvira Liiver Holmström, the director of Tallinn Town Hall by Queen Sofía of Spain at the European Heritage Awards Ceremony which was held on 27 June 2006 at the Palacio Real de El Pardo, Madrid. Europa Nostra medal was presented to Tallinn Town Hall at the ceremony on 15 September 2006 by Siim Kallas, Vice President of the European Commission, and Thomas Willoch, Europa Nostra board member.^[8][9]

In the 1870s, when the Town Hall was going through a renovation, the workers found behind a cabin, 14 woodboxes of old documents. They had not been opened for several centuries. The oldest document was from 1248. The 300 documents span from period 1200-1700 and are written in Latin, two kind of German languages and Swedish. The documents are about Tallinn's, then called Reval, history as well in general the history of the East-Sea Provinces. The documents was sorted by an appointed Commission by Filologs Christian Eduard Pabst, Rutzwurm and Gotthard von Hansen in six categories: the Danish King's Privileges for Reval, letters to a council Selhorst in Reval, and historic documents about the Swedish Town Visby.^[10]