Set amidst rolling countryside, Rõuge is famous for being one of Estonia’s most picturesque villages, offering more of the gently hilly terrain that seems a world away from the flatlands that make up most of Estonia. Its buildings are scattered haphazardly on the slopes above Rõuge Suurjärv Lake – which, at 38m, is the deepest in the country. Suurjärv is the most central of a string of lakes lying in the Rõuge Primeval Valley (Ürgorg), a broad trough carved by a glacier during the last Ice Age. Feeding into the valley is the Ööbikuorg (“Valley of Nightingales”, so-called because it’s a favourite nesting area of the birds in spring), a twisting, steep-sided dell that lies behind the village’s whitewashed, eighteenth-century church.

A well-signed hiking trail into the dell and onwards to the lakes of the Primeval Valley begins just outside the village beside the Haanja road. Looming above the start of the trail is an eight-storey wooden viewing tower, providing a stirring panorama of the Rõuge landscape.

Practical Info

Rõuge is 75km south of Tartu.

Buses: Regular buses run to Rõuge from Võru (if coming from the Tartu direction, change at Võru).