Lossi plats 1a
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Toompea Castle is a building complex located on Toompea in Tallinn,
on the island of Toompea Klindisaare in the Baltic Klint, in the center
of which today the Parliament of the Republic of Estonia is located, at
Lossi plats 1.
Together with the facade of the Toompea Väikes
Fortress, which has been preserved from an earlier period on the west
side, the baroque and early classicist castle building of the former
Estonian provincial government in the northeast wing forms a collection
of buildings of different styles and purposes from different eras.
The fortress complex of the ancient Estonians probably covered the
entire Toompea mountain, and the main fortress was on the highest
hill in the southeast corner. It was probably a stone fort made of
wood, earth and dry masonry. The Danes also started building their
first stone fort there after 1219.
Reign of the Order of the
Sword Brothers
Serious construction was started by the Order of
the Brothers of the Sword, who owned Toompea from 1227 to 1237. At
that time, a fort was completed in the southwestern part of the
Toompea steep, with a watchtower in the southeastern corner. The
rest of Toompea protected the castle by a moat. The fort was called
castrum minus ('small fort') in contrast to the rest of Toompea,
which was called castrum magnus ('big fort').
After 1238, the Danes started to build the fortress, but now not in their old place, but in the place where the Order of the Brothers of the Sword was founded. They divided the castle in two with a wall, leaving its southern part as the front yard, and in the northern yard, in turn, built the residence of the deputy governor, surrounded by a wall. The castle was located above the modern castle yard and joining the western wall at Pika Hermann (pictured). A tower stood next to the gate in the wall between the courtyards. At the beginning of the 14th century, the fortress was expanded with courtyards and walls towards the east. There was also a gate connecting the fortress to the lower city (the Short Leg Gate). Only the walled up large window openings in the western outer wall have survived from the Danish castle.
After Jüriöö's uprising, the Danes sold their possessions in Estonia
and Toompea was owned by the Livonian Order. The order was founded
in 1350-1360. convention building in the center of the castle. Its
height reached 20 meters, the walls were up to 2.6 m thick. In the
1370s, the fortress was completed with a southern forecourt, with
two towers in the corners: the slender Pikk Hermann (1420-1430, now
45.6 meters high) in the southwest and Stür den Kerl (Lower German
'Repel the enemy') square at the bottom, octagonal at the top in the
southeast. In the north-east corner of the fortress, the round
ešogette Pilsticker (Arrow Sharpener) and the artillery tower
Landskrone (Earth Crown), which has now lost its upper floors, but
was originally the same height as Pika Hermann, were built. The
defensive structures to the east and south were also improved. A
moat was dug and the gate connecting the small and large forts was
equipped with a drawbridge.
Opposite the western wall of the
castle was the convention building with cross aisles surrounding the
courtyard, whose compact volume jutted out in the west from the
dansker, and the south-east corner was crowned by a powerful
quadrangular defense tower - Gunpowder Tower.
Originally, the
castle had three gates. They are still visible today, but now the
exits in the west (connection with Toomalev), in the north
(connection with the Great Fortress) are closed, and the main gate
in the southern part of the eastern wall was demolished in later
reconstructions. The castle was surrounded on the north and east by
a deep but dry moat.
In 1561, Toompea came under Swedish possession. The Swedes built the
Riigisaalihoone next to Pika Hermann and in the area between the
convention building and the western wall. Antonius Poliensis, a
master builder of Polish origin, was sent to Tallinn in 1583 to
build a 25-meter-long and 11-meter-wide state hall. In the middle of
the facade of the State Hall building, there was a double-sided
parade staircase with obelisks resting on balls, the model was taken
from the Royal Palace of Stockholm at the time. On the second floor
was a large hall with a log ceiling and an open fanfare balcony on
the outside of its west wall. Openings were cut in the western wall
of the fort to illuminate the hall. The convention building was
raised by one floor and the layout of its rooms was changed. After
the completion of the State Hall and the royal residences, in
August-September 1589, King Johan III of Sweden and his son
Sigismund - King of Poland and heir to the Swedish throne - met
there. Three walled-up window openings have been preserved from this
magnificent state hall in the western facade of the castle, in the
wall next to Pika Hermann.
The convention building was used
as office space during Sweden.
During the 17th century, the
reconstruction work continued, but the fortress had lost its
military importance, especially since the Inger and Swedish bastions
were built in 1696 as new defensive buildings.
The State Hall was built between 1583 and 1590 (architects Antonius Poliensis, Hans von Aken) against the western wall of the castle between Pika Hermann and the convention building. To illuminate the great hall, three tall windows were carved into the western defensive wall, which have been open to evening light again since 1999. A trumpeter's balcony protrudes above the steeple behind the western wall. The two-story representative building in the Renaissance style was divided into three parts by the courtyard: the projecting hall part was joined at the ends by side rooms. The two-sided parade staircase was decorated with pyramidal obelisks standing on balls. The last remains of the Riigissaal, which had already been destroyed, were demolished after the completion of the Riigikogu building.
After the Northern War, the fortress stood empty, until under Catherine II in 1767-1773, its eastern wing was reconstructed as the representative building of the provincial government (Toompea Castle in the narrower sense; architect Johann Schultz from Jena). The eastern part of the castle was demolished and a new wing building on the left was built in the eastern part of the fortress, during its construction part of the ring wall with the corner tower of Stür den Kerl and the second floor (main floor) of the State Hall building were demolished, and the moats in front of the castle were leveled. In 1792, the castle was given from the Estonian knighthood to the provincial government. The main floor of the provincial government building also housed the provincial government and the governor's residence. The rooms on the main floor form a north-south enfilade by the Castle Square. The building of the provincial government resembled an elegant noble palace. In 1808, the right wing of the castle was built.
A new building was built on the foundation of the demolished eastern
wall for the use of the Estonian provincial government. To make room and
obtain building materials, a section of the eastern wall of the castle,
the main gate of the Small Fortress, the southeast tower Stür den Kerl
and the State Hall building were demolished. At the same time, the
defense ditch between Väikes kursuti and Toompea eaestlinus was filled.
The late-baroque palatial facade has generally been preserved to this
day.
The layout is dominated by the White Hall extending through
the building on the main floor, with enfilades of rooms on each wing
opening on the square side and a duplicating corridor on the courtyard
side. The original early neoclassical interior design was destroyed in
the 1930s renovations.
Redesigns continued in the 19th and 20th
centuries. In 1808, the right wing of the building was built, and in
1898, the building of the governor's archive and two additions for
stairs were built in the northern part of the building of the provincial
government.
By 1900, the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral was built on
a green area opposite the provincial government.
The Estonian
provincial prison (Вышгородская турлия) was located in the former wing
of the convention building, where a third floor with solitary cells was
built in 1847. In 1874, the eastern wing building was reconstructed,
where 19 solitary cells were built. There was also a church (Russian:
Церковь во имя Обновления Храма Воскресенія Христова) and a prison
hospital opened in 1882 near the stage prison. At the beginning of the
20th century, there were 200 places of detention in the prison of the
Main Administration of Prisons of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of
the Russian Empire. Tallinn's 1st provincial prison was burned down in
1917 during the March Revolution.
In 1920–1922, the convention
building was demolished and the Riigikogu building was built on its
place.
The Riigikogu building was built between 1920 and 1922 on the ruins
of the former convention building. In addition, at that time some less
prominent utilitarian buildings were erected in place of the former
horse stables along the north wall of the castle. Although the ruins
were demolished, the master plan of the new building follows the
convention building, including a courtyard and references to the
cloisters.
The neo-baroque style expressionist building has
recently started to be valued as the peak achievement of Estonian
architecture of the interwar period, but for its contemporaries it was
simply an unacceptably incomprehensible building.
The Riigikogu
building and also the meeting hall of the Riigikogu building were
designed by Eugen Habermann and Herbert Johanson in 1921-1922
The south wing was built in 1935 (architect Alar Kotli) on the site
of the former chamber building (1793) for the Ministry of the Interior.
In this regard, the rustic limestone facade of the south side of the
castle was redesigned in the same key as the palatial style of the east
side of the castle, and the Governor's garden was expanded westward to
the klindiastang.
In addition, some less prominent utilitarian
buildings were built along the north wall of the castle at that time.