Raekoja plats - julemarked

This guide to Raekoja plats' Christmas market in Tallinn starts with a bonfire the Brotherhood of Blackheads lit around 1441, a night some call the first public Christmas tree in Europe. It follows the market's unlikely engineer, an American hotelier who looked at an empty square in 2001 and staged the old legend for sale. Wooden cabins today sell mulled wine, felted wool and hand carved bowls, and a two-euro deposit gets your mug back when you return it.