Viru Gate

Two stone towers with pointed, shingled roofs stand as the primary entrance to Tallinn’s medieval old town. These gates represent the surviving remnants of a much larger fourteenth-century fortification system that once bristled with defensive walls and towers. Merchants and travelers arriving with their goods navigated these narrow passages for hundreds of years. The rest of the gate complex was demolished during the nineteenth century to allow for better traffic flow and to give the city a more open, modern appearance.