Immediately north of Kadriorg Park, the Song Bowl (Lauluväljak) is a vast amphitheatre that has been the venue for Estonia’s Song Festivals ever since its construction in the 1960s. These biennial gatherings, featuring massed choirs thousands strong, have been an important form of national expression in Estonia since the first all-Estonia Song Festival was held in Tartu in 1869.

The structure, which can accommodate 15,000 singers (with room for a further 30,000 or so performers on the platform in front of the stage and countless thousands of spectators on the banked field beyond it), was filled to capacity for the June 1988 festival, when up to 100,000 people a night came here to express their longing for independence from Soviet rule, giving rise to the epithet “Singing Revolution”.

Since then the Song Bowl has hosted concerts by numerous representatives of Western urban folklore – the Rolling Stones (1998) and Metallica (2006) among them.

In winter the grassy spectators’ slope is transformed into a winter-sports arena, with scores of kids hurling themselves down the incline on sleds, old tyres or bits of cardboard.