 Roofs of Tallinn / Estonian folk costume |
 by Philip Game
Time to pick my way back down to street level. But as I turned, I found the spiral staircase enveloped in darkness. The door where I had entered the tower was firmly locked, and so was the massive oak door further below, at street level.
Trapped!
Workers restoring the minaret-like needle of Tallinn's fourteenth-century town hall had locked up as they left. “Hello, hello, tere, tere… “, but my entire Estonian vocabulary could not draw a response.
Released eventually, I dusted myself off and retreated to the nearest of many café-bars, overshadowed by the bulk of northern Europe's last surviving medieval Gothic town hall.
Down through the centuries, the history of Tallinn is a tortured tale of the ebb and flow of empires; of quiet prosperity interrupted by yet another battle. Earlier captives than myself had been confronted by the torture rack; equally frightening was the grotesque black canvas costume with its fearsome hood and pointed snout, shrouding the medieval physicians as they dealt with the victims of plague.
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