House of Peter the Great

The small house at the edge of Lasnamäe looks modest beside the large Kadriorg Palace. The cliff begins behind it: from above, you can see the city, the bay, and the route by which ships approached Reval. At first, this was the country estate of a Reval townsman; during naval campaigns, the Russian tsar lived here in order to watch the Swedish fleet himself. The two added rooms turned the former dwelling into a small symmetrical palace for short visits.

In April eighteen oh four, the Russian emperor Alexander I found a neglected “old palace” here. It was called old after the large Kadriorg Palace appeared next door. No one had lived in this house since the time of Peter the Great; the wing he had added had already fallen apart, and the roof and chimney were deteriorating. Livestock grazed in the park.

Peter the Great, the Russian tsar who needed to keep watch on the Swedish fleet during the Great Northern War, first settled here in the summer of seventeen fourteen. At the time, it was the country house of a Reval townsman. The tsar chose the place because of the Lasnamäe cliff immediately behind the house: from there, he could see the city, the bay, and the Swedish ships approaching Reval. Peter lived here at the height of the naval campaign, personally commanded the fleet, and regularly climbed to the edge of the cliff to check the horizon.

A year later, he bought the estate from the widow of its former owner and ordered two rooms to be added. It became a small symmetrical palace where the tsar stayed during his visits to Reval until seventeen twenty-three. After his death, no new residents moved in. As a result, the furniture was not replaced with more fashionable pieces, but without a permanent owner the rooms gradually decayed.

Alexander I ordered that the house, the neighboring buildings, and the grounds be “restored to their original condition and kept clean.” He entrusted the work to the Reval Port Authority. Officials had to repair the building, restore the park paths, and separately prohibit livestock grazing.

In eighteen oh six, they reported that the old palace had been returned to its original appearance. The report was too confident. The builders demolished Peter's collapsed wing, separated the open kitchen with a wall, and built a mezzanine above it. They placed the tsar's table and twelve chairs there and called the room a dining room, although it had not existed under Peter.

But the repairs stopped the decay. An attendant was assigned to the house, and in summer they began admitting all visitors free of charge. This is how Tallinn's oldest museum came into being.

The house's present exterior outline appeared precisely under Alexander I: Peter's wing is no longer part of it. And if the dining room upstairs is open inside, Peter himself never dined in that room.