The impregnable-looking bastion known as Kiek in de Kök was built in 1475 to provide a home for Toompea’s main gun battery. Named in honour of a Low-German expression meaning “look in the kitchen” (the bastion’s sentries could see straight into the parlours of downtown Tallinn), it now contains an entertaining, if sparse, collection of artefacts linked to the town’s defences.

There are suits of armour, rusty-looking weapons and replicas of the cannon once stationed here, variously nicknamed Lion, Fat Girl and Bitter Death – this last being engraved with the following cheerful rhyme:

Bitter Death is my name
Thus I travel everywhere
Killing the rich and the poor
To me, who I slay is all the same.

Bastion Tunnels

Kiek in de Kök is the starting point for atmospheric tours of the Bastion Tunnels (Bastionkogid), a recently rediscovered network of seventeenth-century passages beneath Toompea. Originally built by the Swedes in order to supply their hillside gun positions, they were used during World War II as air raid shelters and subsequently modernized by the Soviets, before slowly falling out of use.

Practical Info

Komandandi tee 2

Kiek in de kök: Open: May - September daily 10:00 - 18:00; October - April Tuesday - Saturday 11:00 - 18:00, Sunday 11:00 - 16:00

Tickets: €12

Bastion Tunnels: Open: same times as Kiek in de kök. Tickets: €8. English-language tours (€7) run daily throughout the summer; ring +372 644 6686 to check times and reserve a place.