Fat Margaret Tower & Estonian Maritime Museum

Paks Margareeta was built between 1511 and 1530 to protect the Great Coast Gate — the harbour entrance to Tallinn. Its walls are five metres thick and the tower is squat, wide and low, unlike the slender spires elsewhere in the old town: pure military engineering to soak up cannon fire. After centuries as a prison and a barracks it was gutted by fire during the 1917 revolution, and only reopened in 2020 after a spectacular ten-year renovation that added a modern spiral staircase and a rooftop terrace. Nobody agrees on where the name came from — a heavy-mouthed cannon on the platform, or a cook who fed the garrison. Before you go in, walk round the seaward side on Rannamäe tee for two minutes: from there you see the full girth of the drum and the gate arch together, which you cannot from Pikk street.

The Estonian Maritime Museum fills the tower over five floors and does a superb job telling how a small nation lived off the Baltic — Viking-era finds, Hanseatic trade, tsarist naval service, the Soviet fishing fleet, the modern ferries. There are proper hands-on exhibits: a diving bell you can climb into, a tugboat wheelhouse to steer, and interactive maps that show you every wreck on the Estonian seabed. The roof terrace is the reveal — a 360-degree view over the old town, the harbour and the Baltic. The oldest thing in the building is the timber of the Maasilinn ship, a sixteenth-century wreck raised off Saaremaa and laid out in low light on the lower level. Everything is captioned in English as well as Estonian, so no guide is needed; give the ship-model cases a quick pass unless models are your thing.

Buy tickets online for a €1 discount; the roof terrace is included and is the highlight, so save it for last. Combined ticket with the Seaplane Harbour (Lennusadam), the museum's sister site, is €30 and worth it for anyone with a maritime interest. Just outside is the Great Coast Gate and the medieval Three Sisters merchant houses (now a hotel); the walk into Vanalinn along Pikk street starts here. Inside, the order of play is simple: ticket desk and shop on the ground floor, then climb — by lift or by the new steel spiral — floor by floor towards the present day, and out onto the roof at the end. There is no restaurant in the tower, so plan food for Pikk street or the Rotermann quarter afterwards rather than trying to eat here.

Getting here is a walk, not a journey. The address is Pikk 70, at the top of the old town's spine: from Raekoja plats it is about eight minutes uphill along Pikk, past the House of the Blackheads and the Great Guild, finishing at the gate rather than doubling back on yourself. From the Viru Gate end allow 12 to 15 minutes. The Linnahall stop on Mere puiestee is the transport node that matters — trams 1 and 2 on the Kopli line and several city buses all call there, five minutes on foot below the gate. A single ride from the driver is €2; on a Ühiskaart smartcard (€2 for the card) an hour costs €1.50, which only pays if you are moving all day. From the ferry terminals it is roughly 10 minutes on foot from A-Terminal and 20 from D-Terminal. Do not drive: Vanalinn is closed to through traffic and old town parking is the city's steepest tariff.

Prices are straightforward and there is nothing extra to pay once you are through the door. Adult entry is €14 at the desk or €13 booked online, concession €10, student €7 and a family ticket €28; children under 8 go free, and the Tallinn Card covers entry outright. The roof terrace, the diving bell, the wheelhouse and every interactive screen are included — no supplement, no timed extras, no separate charge for the temporary exhibition space. The one decision worth making in advance is the €30 combined ticket with the Seaplane Harbour, which saves €6 against paying at both sites and can be bought at whichever you reach first. If you are not confident you will get out to Lennusadam, skip it and pay the €14; the combined ticket is only a bargain if the second half actually happens. Two adults with two small children should always take the €28 family ticket.

Time it around two things: the closed Monday and the roof. Doors open at 10:00 Tuesday to Sunday and the first hour is the quietest of the day — you get the lower floors to yourself and the terrace before the light hardens. Late afternoon, from about 16:00, empties out again; aim to be through the desk by 17:00 as the museum shuts at 18:00. Summer cruise crowds concentrate on Raekoja plats and Viru street rather than up here, so even in July this is a calmer building than most of Vanalinn. The roof terrace is open April to October only, and staff close it in high wind at any time of year, so a December visit is an interior visit — good on a rainy afternoon, but you lose the best part. May, June and September give you long light, an open roof and no queue at all.

It suits families better than its stone exterior suggests: children of roughly five to twelve will spend most of their time in the diving bell, the wheelhouse and the wreck map, and 90 minutes passes without a complaint. Teenagers do the tower in an hour and remember the roof. Wheelchair users and anyone with a buggy are unusually well served for a sixteenth-century bastion — the renovation put in a lift serving the exhibition floors, so ask at the desk about the final approach to the terrace rather than assuming stairs. If you have only a one-hour gap before a ferry it still works: buy online, take the lift straight up, walk down through the floors and out. Skip it if what you actually want is big hardware — submarines, icebreakers, seaplane hangars — because that is all at Lennusadam, not here.

Fold it into the northern end of the old town and you have a good half-day. The Three Sisters merchant houses are literally next door at Pikk 71; St Olaf's Church is three minutes away on Lai, and its tower climb (open April to October, around €5, 232 steps) gives a higher and wilder view than the terrace you have just left — do that second, not first. The House of the Blackheads is five minutes down Pikk and the Estonian History Museum in the Great Guild Hall about six. Six minutes seaward stands Linnahall, the derelict 1980 Olympic concert hall, worth a look purely as concrete archaeology. Onwards, it is 15 minutes northwest to Telliskivi and the Balti jaam market, or 25 to 30 minutes along the Kultuurikilomeeter shore path to the Seaplane Harbour — the walk that makes the €30 combined ticket pay.

The honest caveats. First, the interior is a 21st-century insertion of steel, pale concrete and glass; apart from the atrium wall and the gate passage you see very little raw medieval fabric, so anyone chasing dank stonework should spend their €14 on Kiek in de Kök and the bastion tunnels instead. Second, the roof terrace is small — a dozen people fills it — and on a grey day much of the view is working port and Linnahall's concrete, not postcard spires. Third, you cannot walk the city wall from here; that is the Hellemann Tower stretch on Müürivahe. Fourth, plenty of visitors arrive expecting the submarine Lembit and are quietly disappointed. And fifth, in November to March, with the terrace shut and darkness at 15:30, the two-hour visit honestly compresses to about 75 minutes.

Hours & entry

Not free

Tue-Sun 10:00-18:00 · Mon closed · Roof open Apr-Oct

What to see

• Rooftop terrace and cannon platform — Take the lift or spiral stairs to level 6
• 1930s diving bell and helmet you can climb into — Level 3, deep-sea diving hall
• The 5-metre-thick original bastion walls — Best seen from the ground-floor central atrium

Tips from the ground

• Combined ticket with Seaplane Harbour (€30) saves €6 over separate entries.
• Roof terrace closes November to March — go in season to get the full experience.
• Book the online ticket for €13 instead of €14 at the door.