In Tallinn

Tallinn Old Town

Just outside the walls of Tallinn’s medieval Old Town stands a high-rise hotel with a bleak, functional design. When it opened in 1972, it was Estonia’s first skyscraper and the largest hotel in the Baltics. The local joke, that the hotel was “made of micro-concrete, as in concrete and microphones,” was in fact no joke.  The top floor contained a radio center, not discovered until 1994, from which the KGB spied on hotel guests.