Midway along Saaremaa’s south coast, the former fortress town of Kuressaare is the island’s main market town and service centre. The centre of town remains much as it was before World War II, with traditional houses, shady avenues, and a spectacularly well-preserved castle. It is also very much a symbol of contemporary Estonia, boasting fashionable cafés, boutique hotels and spa centres.

Town Hall and around

Most life in Kuressaare revolves around an elongated central square where its main streets converge. An eighteenth-century Town Hall, now an art gallery, preserves an exhuberant Baroque ceiling painting in the main council chamber. West of here, cobbled alleys lead into an atmospheric quarter of low timber houses, many now occupied by chic shops and cafes.

The Bishop’s Castle

South of the centre is the magnificent Bishop’s Castle (Piiskopilinnus), a sturdy structure constructed from locally quarried dolomite. The original castle was built in 1261 by Bishop German of Ösel-Wiek in order to keep the restless Saaremaa natives in check.

The current edifice, surrounded by a star-shaped system of moats and earthworks, dates largely from the fourteenth century. It’s such a well-preserved quadrangle of stone that it almost looks like a movie set. Surrounding it are ramparts thrown up by the Swedes in the seventeenth century, now a grassy park. The castle keep now holds the Saaremaa Regional Museum.