The Danse Macabre
Death dancing with pope and peasant alike.
Ivar Leidus — CC BY-SA 3.0 ee · Diego Delso — CC BY-SA 3.0 · Diego Delso — CC BY-SA 3.0 · Diego Delso — CC BY-SA 3.0
A Gothic church that became a museum because it could no longer be prayed in: Niguliste was built in the thirteenth century for German merchants, and it survived the iconoclasm of the Reformation when its warden locked the doors and poured lead into the locks — so its altars and art were preserved at the moment when the region's church art was being destroyed entirely. Soviet bombing in March 1944 then wrecked it and it stood ruined, before restoration as a museum of sacred art last century. It holds Estonia's most precious artwork: Bernt Notke's Danse Macabre (about 1500) — a painting once thirty metres long of which only seven survive, showing Death dancing with pope, emperor, cardinal and peasant alike, a reminder that death does not discriminate. It also holds Hermen Rode's gilded altarpiece and merchants' graves in the floor, with organ concerts every weekend on the acoustics of the Gothic vault.
Death dancing with pope and peasant alike.
How the church survived the iconoclasm.
Niguliste 3, Tallinn
The Danish King's GardenA small garden on the slope below Toompea hill, hemmed in by the city wall and i1 minute walk4.8
Kiek in de Kök and the Bastion TunnelsAn artillery tower called "Peep into the Kitchen": Kiek in de Kök was built in 12 minutes walk4.7
Tallinn Town Hall and SquareNorthern Europe's last surviving Gothic town hall: Tallinn's took its present fo2 minutes walk4.6
Alexander Nevsky CathedralFive black-and-gold onion domes directly facing parliament: the Russian Orthodox2 minutes walk4.7
War of Independence Victory ColumnAn illuminated glass column about twenty-three metres high at one end of Freedom3 minutes walk4.3A late fifteenth-century German painter from Lübeck, among the Baltic region's greatest artists; he painted another Danse Macabre in Lübeck that was destroyed in the war — so the Estonian version is the only one of his to survive.