House of the Blackheads
Renaissance guild hall of a medieval merchant brotherhood, later a Soviet culture palace, now Tallinn's only such facade.
This guide to the House of the Blackheads in Tallinn opens on a dance night in 1940, as Soviet forces crossed the border outside. It steps back nearly six hundred years, into the Brotherhood of the Blackheads, a guild of young unmarried merchants and ship owners who feasted under a Moor's head emblem, fought fires and drilled as Tallinn's militia inside this Renaissance house on Pikk Street. You'll hear about the carved facade Arent Passer added in 1597, and about Saint Maurice, the guild's unlikely patron. Look closely at the painted doors beside the entrance, added a few decades later.
Audio guides are written and narrated by AI.