Telliskivi Creative City

This guide to Telliskivi Creative City in Tallinn traces the site's life from 1896, when the Baltic Railway built workshops here for blacksmiths and wheelwrights, through 1958, when the Soviets turned it into the Kalinin Electrical Engineering Plant employing thousands under Moscow's quotas. It lingers on the research wings, where engineers handled mercury and radioactive materials with little protection while military inspectors watched the shop floor. You'll hear how the machines fell silent in the 1990s and the halls sat empty for years before artists and shopkeepers began moving in. Walk between the brick walls and murals, you're standing on the same factory floor those workers once filled.