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The ice roads are properly paved between the newly cooled buildings and the mighty ancient walls which, protecting it, embellish it with towers and keeps. You stop to ask something and people smile, and always polite, they inform you precisely. Tallinn, capital of kindness, and green city of Europe 2023, is the main gateway to this country that adores Italy and, among its many austere beauties, made of stratifications of Danish, Swedish and Russian conquerors, reserves unusual surprises.
An example: here is the most beautiful contemporary bookshop on the old continent, among the industrial buildings of Pojala. On its walls, the installation by Federico Ellade Peruzzotti, “Woman who run with the wolves” is already worth the trip to this land of courtesy. And what about the Fotografiska museum? The portraits of the Estonian Toomas Volkmann, on display until March 10, are of an intense and superb charm.
Tartu 2024, the rich program of the Estonian city, European capital of culture
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Tartu, Bad Ischl (Austria) and Bodø (Norvegia)
Now, however, the capital lays down the scepter and leaves the baton to Tartu. It is the second city in the country, but its university – the most renowned in Estonia – makes it a Bologna of the Baltics. Tartu is the European capital of culture for 2024 together with Bad Ischl (Austria) and Bodø (Norway).
Tartu European Capital of Culture 2024
Visiting it is an ever-increasing pleasure: its streets are lined with buildings with austere facades, warm little tourist shops, full of carved wooden objects. The city palace square features buildings surmounted by classical gables, in shades of pearl pink and light grey, and an ice rink cheers up the entrance of noisy schoolchildren who drag themselves on skates, holding on to strange “walkers”. of aluminium.
The University of Tartu
And here in Tartu, with the imposing University headquarters dominating all the buildings, there are many unexpected wonders. First of all, the repeated “kissing scene”. Immortalized in a bronze sculpture, which romantically protected by the umbrella that surmounts it, brightens up the square in front of the town hall, it is the protagonist theme of this town which, apparently cold and staid, is instead warmed up with eroticism. Robert Doisneau would have had endless models here: because, as everyone explains, the many boys who crowd the university halls are very lavish when it comes to kissing. Years ago a couple was immortalized, to the delight of Instagram, suspended frolicking between the arches of the city bridge over the Emajõgi river. So why not?