Explore Tartu

Why visit Tartu

Tartu is Estonia's intellectual capital and the spiritual second city — a quiet, student-saturated town on the Emajõgi river built around the University of Tartu, which Sweden's Gustavus Adolphus founded in 1632 and which still shapes the city's whole rhythm. Tartu held the European Capital of Culture title in 2024, and the legacy is everywhere in renovated cultural venues. The Toomemägi (Cathedral Hill) park behind the main square holds the dramatic brick ruins of the medieval Cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul — partly fitted out as the University Library Museum — alongside the old Anatomy Theatre and Hooning's pavilion. Down in the centre, the leaning Town Hall (genuinely tilted, like a small Estonian Pisa) presides over the lovely Town Hall Square. The brand-new ERM — the Estonian National Museum, in a striking modern building on a former Soviet runway — is exceptional, telling the country's long story through everything from medieval folk traditions to KGB surveillance equipment. Don't miss the AHHAA Science Centre (one of the best in the Baltics), the bohemian Aparaaditehas factory complex, and the genuinely funny statue of the kissing students in the main square's fountain.