Town Hall Square
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Transcript
Town Hall Square is Tartu's civic room, but the city around it has repeatedly been rebuilt.
Fire and war damaged Tartu several times, including major destruction in the eighteenth century. The present classical appearance of the centre belongs largely to rebuilding after those catastrophes.
That makes the square a good opening for a city whose intellectual institutions repeatedly started again.
The Town Hall itself represents municipal government within changing states: Swedish rule, Russian imperial administration, independent Estonia, Soviet occupation and restored independence.
Political borders moved while the square continued to organise local life.
The famous fountain of kissing students is modern and playful, which is useful because university cities are not sustained by solemnity alone. Students require cafés, apartments, gossip and bad decisions as reliably as they require libraries.
Tartu's population historically included Estonian, German, Russian and Jewish communities, among others. Urban language depended on class, institution and period.
A German-speaking professor and an Estonian-speaking rural visitor could inhabit the same square while belonging to very different cultural systems.
That is why national history should not be projected backwards too simply. Modern Estonia rightly treats Tartu as central to national culture, but the city became capable of that role partly because earlier imperial institutions had concentrated education and print here.
Our next stop is the University Main Building. Its classical columns are one of Estonia's most recognisable academic images, but the institution behind them has changed language and political allegiance more than once.