Dominating the summit of Toomemägi are the stark, skeletal remains of Tartu’s red-brick Cathedral (Toomkirik), built by the Knights of the Sword during the thirteenth century. Although Tartu became a thoroughly Protestant city in the 1520s, the Poles returned the cathedral to the Catholic fold when they took control of Tartu in 1582, and the building’s destruction by fire in 1624 – the result of sparks flying from a Midsummer Night’s bonfire – was seen by many contemporaries as a sign of divine displeasure.

It was J.W. Krause, the architect in charge of the redevelopment of Toomemägi at the beginning of the nineteenth century, who hit on the idea of leaving the bulk of the cathedral as a romantic ruin, while rebuilding the choir to serve as the university library – the charmingly lopsided results of which can be seen today.

University History Museum

Since 1979, the library has served as the University History Museum (Tartu Ülikooli muuseum), a three-floor collection beginning (at the top) with portraits of the university’s first rectors and a diorama of a seventeenth-century anatomical theatre, in which intestines hang from the table like a string of butcher’s sausages.