One of Estonia’s most pleasant provincial towns, Viljandi offers a low-rise jumble of houses draped around the northwestern end of the 5km-long Lake Viljandi. The town sprung to importance in medieval times as a staging post on the Riga-Novgorod trade route, although it’s the handsome stock of early twentieth-century red-brick buildings and prim timber cottages that give the place its charm.

Castle Hill

There at least the remains of a medieval castle on Castle Hill. Once the strongest fortress in southern Estonia, it was blasted into a state beyond repair by Swedish siege guns in the 1620s. West of the ruins, a stretch of the former moat is spanned by a dainty, pedestrian-only suspension bridge, built in 1931 by public-spirited aristocrat Karl von Mensenkampff and nowadays a much-photographed landmark.

The Kondas House

In among the cobbled streets of central Viljandi is the Kondase Keskus (”The Kondas House”), one of the country’s most in-your-face art museums. It’s primarily devoted to self-taught local painter Paul Kondas (1900-1985), an outwardly conventional schoolteacher who escaped into a psychedelic dream-world whenever he put brush to canvas. Kondas clearly believed that a wild zest for living lay behind the unexcitable nature of the Estonian national character. His paintings of St John’s Eve celebrations and summer bathing trips are filled with uninhibited dancing, nudity and mischief.

Viljandi Museum