Soviet relics

HARA HARBOUR

The former Russian submarine base at Hara sits on the northern coast and has become a strangely serene site for watersports. It’s not always been this way, however — built in the 1950s, the now-forlorn structure still has plenty for history buffs to marvel at, including Soviet artwork, photographs from the era and no shortage of stories from locals who lived under the regime.

HOTEL VIRU &

KGB MUSEUM

Given its astonishing history, the very fact that Tallin’s towering Hotel Viru is still a working hotel is one of its most surprising features. At the height of the Cold War, the KGB spied on guests, whose rooms were riddled with surveillance equipment. Today the 23rd floor has been dedicated as a museum to the city’s paranoid period of history.

SOVIET STATUE GRAVEYARD

Statues — many created between 1945 and 1990 by Estonian artists — salvaged from squares, plinths and buildings in Tallinn have now been amassed in a plot behind Maarjamäe Palace, part of the Estonian History Museum. It’s an eery feeling to wander among oversized icons of the Soviet area, including Stalin and Lenin. The scowling, groundlevel, head of the latter is particularly unsettling.