Energy Discovery Center and Planetarium

This guide to the Energy Discovery Center and Planetarium in Tallinn starts inside the old switching stage of Tallinn's first power plant, opened in March 1913 by the Volta company to designs by architect Hermann Schmidt. It follows the building through decades of burning coal, peat and oil shale to keep the city lit, its 1929 crane, and its slow shutdown after 1979 into a shuttered museum through the 1990s. You'll hear how engineers later decided the plant's real legacy was teaching electricity rather than generating it, filling the old hall with a Tesla coil sealed inside a Faraday cage. Stand near the demonstration and listen for the crackle of the Van de Graaff generator beside it.