Tallinn Town Hall

This guide to Tallinn Town Hall follows the weathervane above its spire, a guard known as Old Thomas, through the versions the city has given him since 1530. It traces the Gothic hall itself, built between 1402 and 1404 for a council that had run this Hanseatic city since 1322, and the night in March 1944 when Soviet bombers knocked the guard from his post. The square below has hosted a market and a Christmas tree every year since 1441, regardless of who was watching from the spire above.