Top 10 Things To Do in Estonia (City Guides)

Quick answer · where to go in Estonia

Almost every trip starts in Tallinn, and two or three nights covers the walled old town, the Kumu art museum and the Kadriorg parks. From there the country splits three ways. South is Tartu, the university city and a 2024 European Capital of Culture, with Viljandi's folk-music hill fort and the ski trails at Otepää beyond it. West is the coast: Pärnu's beach, the wooden spa town of Haapsalu, and the ferries to Saaremaa and its castle at Kuressaare. East along the Gulf of Finland is Lahemaa National Park, bog boardwalks and manor houses an hour from the capital, then Narva and its castle facing Russia across the river. June to August is the window: long light, swimmable sea and every island ferry on the summer timetable.

All regions Tallinn & Harju South Estonia West coast & islands Northeast Estonia Lahemaa & the national parks

Jump to City guides Fun fact Stereotypes Famous Estonians Food FAQ

2 Estonia city guides

Sorted by what travelers are saving this month.

Tallinn

Europe · 10 picks

Tartu

Europe · 10 picks

Fun fact

One number worth knowing

Estonia launched e-Residency on 1 December 2014, the first programme anywhere to give people with no physical connection to a country a state-issued digital identity and the right to run a company in it online.

Stereotypes, sorted out

The clichés you have heard, what is actually true, and how to fit in.

"Estonia is a day trip from Helsinki"

The realityThe ferry does cross in about two hours, and a day gives you the old town and nothing else. Tartu, the west-coast islands and Lahemaa are each half a day from Tallinn, and they are the reason to stay a week.

"It is basically Russia"

The realityEstonian is Finno-Ugric, closer to Finnish than to any Slavic language. The country was occupied by the Soviet Union from 1940 until it restored independence in 1991, joined the EU and NATO in 2004 and the euro in 2011. The Russian-speaking minority is real, largest in Narva and parts of Tallinn, and it is a fact about the country rather than a definition of it.

"Estonians are cold"

The realityReserve is not rudeness. Small talk is thin and silence is comfortable, but ask a direct question and you get a direct, generous answer. Open with tere.

"The old town is the whole country"

The realityTallinn’s medieval centre has been a UNESCO World Heritage site since 1997 and covers about a square kilometre. Forest covers roughly half of Estonia, the bogs behind the coast are walked on boardwalks, and the west breaks into islands you reach by ferry.

"There is nothing to do in winter"

The realityWinter is the sauna season, the Christmas market fills Raekoja plats through December, and Otepää in the south is a cross-country skiing town. The days are short. That is what the candles are for.

"Everything is digital, so nothing is old"

The realityEstonia files taxes and votes online, and it also holds a song festival that has run since 1869 and keeps a Hanseatic street plan that has barely moved since the thirteenth century. Both are the same country.

The Christmas market in Raekoja platsA sauna on a Saturday nightBog shoes on a Soomaa boardwalkSkype and e-Residency inside ten minutes of any conversationBlack bread on every tableKama stirred into buttermilkThe July ferry queue to Saaremaa

Cultural notes that actually help

Say tere on the way in and aitäh on the way out. Two words shift the temperature of an exchange here further than a paragraph of English does.
Take your shoes off indoors. In homes, many offices and most guesthouses, the slippers by the door are for you.
Sauna is washing, not a party. You go in clean and quiet, without a swimsuit in single-sex saunas, and the phone stays outside.
Silence is not awkward. Estonians leave gaps in a conversation and do not rush to fill them, so filling them yourself reads as nervous.
Everyman’s right lets you walk, pick berries and gather mushrooms on most uncultivated land. Fenced yards and planted fields are the exception, and you leave no trace.
Tipping is light. Service is not added to the bill, so rounding up covers most of it and ten percent in a restaurant is generous.
The song festival is not folklore staged for visitors. It runs every five years, tens of thousands sing, and the tradition carried the country through the Singing Revolution in 1988.

Famous Estonian faces

The names behind Estonia's music, letters, sport, politics, science, art and business. Pick a field.

Arvo Pärt

Composer of Fratres and Spiegel im Spiegel, for years the most performed living composer in the world

Lennart Meri

Writer and documentary film-maker who became the first president of the restored republic

Paul Keres

Chess grandmaster who contended for the world title across three decades

Kelly Sildaru

Freestyle skier, a Winter X Games champion at thirteen and an Olympic bronze medallist in 2022

Neeme Järvi

Conductor with one of the largest discographies in classical recording

Veljo Tormis

Choral composer who set Baltic Finnic runic song for modern choirs

Jaan Kross

Novelist of The Czar’s Madman and Estonia’s most translated writer

Lydia Koidula

Poet and playwright at the centre of the nineteenth-century national awakening

Erki Nool

Decathlon gold at the Sydney Olympics in 2000

Gerd Kanter

Discus gold at the Beijing Olympics in 2008

Anett Kontaveit

Tennis player who reached world number two before retiring in 2023

Kaja Kallas

Prime minister from 2021 to 2024, now the European Union’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs

Konstantin Päts

First head of state of the independent republic, deported after the Soviet occupation of 1940

Karl Ernst von Baer

Naturalist at Tartu who identified the mammalian egg and founded modern embryology

Michel Sittow

Renaissance portraitist born in Tallinn, court painter to Isabella of Castile

Taavet Hinrikus

Skype’s first employee, then co-founder of the money-transfer company Wise

Ahti Heinla

Wrote the code behind Skype, then co-founded the delivery-robot company Starship Technologies

Must-try Estonian food

Rye bread first, then the meat, the Baltic and the sweets. Pick a category.

Must leib

Dense sour rye, on the table at every meal and the base of half the dishes below.

Mulgipuder

Barley and potato mashed together with pork and fried onion, from the south.

Hapukapsad

Slow-braised sauerkraut, the standing partner to roast pork at Christmas.

Kartulisalat

Potato salad bound with sour cream, at every celebration table.

Verivorst

Blood sausage with barley, baked and served with lingonberry jam.

Sült

Jellied pork, sliced cold and eaten with mustard and black bread.

Karbonaad

Breaded pork cutlet, the weekday plate in any canteen.

Kiluvõileib

Baltic sprat on buttered black bread with egg, the national open sandwich.

Rosolje

Beetroot, herring, potato and egg in a pink dressing.

Suitsukala

Smoked flounder, perch and eel from the coast and from Lake Peipus.

Kama

Roasted grain flour stirred into buttermilk or kefir, sweet and grainy.

Kohuke

A curd bar in a chocolate shell, from any supermarket cold case.

Vastlakukkel

A cardamom bun packed with whipped cream, eaten on Shrove Tuesday.

Kringel

Plaited sweet bread with cardamom and raisins, sold by the coil.

Vana Tallinn

A dark rum liqueur, sweet and spiced, poured neat or into coffee.

Kali

Fermented bread drink, barely alcoholic and drunk cold all summer.

Estonia travel FAQ

How many days do you need in Estonia?+

Five to seven. Three nights in Tallinn covers the old town, Kumu and Kadriorg, and the rest buys Tartu plus one of the two coasts: Lahemaa in the north or the Saaremaa ferry in the west. A long weekend works if Tallinn is all you want.

When is the best time to visit Estonia?+

June to August, when the light runs late into the evening, the sea is swimmable and every island ferry is on the summer timetable. December is the other case: the Raekoja plats market, snow more often than not, and the cheapest rooms of the year.

Is Estonia expensive to visit?+

Less than the Nordic countries across the water, and more than it was a decade ago. Budget roughly €80–140 per person per day mid-range, and less outside Tallinn, where rooms and restaurants drop noticeably.

Do you need to speak Estonian?+

No. English is widely spoken in Tallinn and Tartu and among younger Estonians everywhere. Russian is a first language for a large minority, especially in Narva. Tere and aitäh still go a long way.

Can you get around Estonia without a car?+

Yes for the main routes. Elron’s trains run Tallinn to Tartu in a little over two hours, and intercity coaches reach the towns and the ferry ports the railway does not. A car earns its keep for Lahemaa’s manor houses and the smaller island roads.

Top 10s across Estonia