The rich history of Tallinn, Estonia can be explored by visiting one of its many museums. To help narrow down the options we have compiled a list of the top 5 Tallinn Museums.

1. KGB Museum
In Soviet time Hotel Viru was good enough to accommodate foreigners. It also had to be good enough for the KGB … The museum represents a collection of the stories of two worlds. In one of them, mostly existing on paper, happy Soviet people enjoyed a life of plenty and friendship, led by a single wise political party. The other world – the real one – had a nature much more diverse and complicated.

Voted by many as one of the Top Museums to visit…
“Fascinating tour, great slice of soviet history and the guide did a great job of providing insight in a compelling way. Definitely visit it.”

2. The Kumu Art Museum
The museum site is located on four hectares in Tallinn, on the limestone bank of Lasnamägi next to Kadriorg Park. The office of the President of the Republic of Estonia and Kadriorg Palace, which is a part of the Art Museum, lie in the vicinity of the art museum. The building has seven floors, including technical floors, and the total area is 23 900 m². In 2004 the new museum got its name – Kumu – in an open competition.

The Kumu (KUnstiMUuseum) Art Museum is a modern multifunctional art building, which contains exhibition halls, a lecture hall offering diverse facilities, and an educational centre for young visitors and for art lovers.

The Kumu offers various exciting tours. Come to the Kumu to see, hear, think and experiment!
Tour fee is 48 €. Tours can be booked in Russian, English, Finnish and German. Other languages upon agreement.
The museum ticket price is added to the tour fee.

3. Tallinn City Museum
The Museum introduce the visitors into the city life and the relative development. The exhibitions plans are dedicated to twentieth century, the wars, the Soviet occupation and finally the independence. Tallinn City Museum is a collection of 8 different museums. Out of these, the main building is generally preferred as the Tallinn City Museum. It is located at the Vene Street 17 in Tallinn city of Estonia.

The museum holds a permanent exhibition which displays the rich history of Tallinn city. Tourists can see the artifacts belonging to different eras, which range from the medieval times till the date of Tallinn’s independence.

4. Estonian Open Air Museum
Outside the city centre, on the seashore in Rocca al Mare, there’s Estonian Open Air Museum, where you can see Estonian rural architecture and village life from the 18th to the 20th centuries. There is a church, a tavern, a school, some mills, a fire station, etc. The museum’s 12 farms give an overview of how people with different economic conditions lived in the olden times. It’s a great place to pass time and gain some wisdom in every season.

5. Kiek in de Kök
The museum inside this great artillery tower (whose name means “peep into the kitchen” in low German because from the upper floors soldiers could peer into the houses of the lower town) is interesting, but don’t miss a guided tour of its limestone bastion passages, which reopened in March with new video and sound effects. Built to conceal the movement of soldiers, the 500m of passages (half are still being dug out) were used as a bomb shelter during the 1944 Soviet bombings, and inhabited by a large community of homeless people in the 1990s.