Tartu’s the hot ticket
Estonia’s second city is in the spotlight — and not just for its acclaimed saunas
OvEr the roar of heavy metal music, I bellow: ‘Don’t put your hand down my shorts!’ A viking-looking man, a long beard tickling his tattooed chest and a wet skirt hanging from his waist, has a huge mound of crushed ice in his right hand.
Outside there’s a blizzard of snowfall; inside the flames of a furnace glimmer in my friends’ fearful eyes and the mercury jumps to 78 degrees celsius.
Karl-Peter, the heavy-metal sauna master, ignores me, tugs open my waistband and crams the ice inside. I respond by thrashing my chortling companions with a bundle of birch twigs.
Saunas have been part of the country’s culture since the early 13th century. There are more than 100,000 licensed ones, and in 2014 Unesco added Estonia’s smoke sauna culture to its cultural heritage list.
Historically, mothers gave birth in the family sauna, livestock was cooked in there and dead relatives were tended to inside it. To Estonians, saunas are a matter of life and death, so it’s fitting the theme behind the Tartu 2024 cultural programme is Arts of Survival.
Located in the south of the country, Estonia’s second-largest city, Tartu, is 2024 European Capital of Culture. This year it will host more than 1,000 events. Expect sauna marathons, public art installations, harvest parties, film nights, concerts and mushroom-foraging hikes though the country’s famous bogs.
Tartu, a two-hour drive from the capital, Tallinn, is anxious to highlight its future as a sustainable city; its survival as a region that emerged from Soviet rule with its culture intact; and its emphasis on human connections. Kuldar Leis, CEO of Tartu 2024, tells me Estonians are famously prudish — but that hasn’t stopped him organising a mass kissing event in the city on May 18 to mark the 30th anniversary of Estonia’s first participation in Eurovision.
The city is also home to one of the oldest universities of Europe, founded in 1632. With such a young population, you’ll find former warehouses repurposed as coffee shops and hip restaurants adorned with street art. But Tartu Old Town is crammed with 18thcentury architecture and the oldest parts of St John’s Church date back to the 14th century.
On my last night, I attend a rave at the Estonian National Museum. Amid displays about its tumultuous history, revellers dance, embrace and celebrate Tartu’s elevation to the European stage.