The Maarjamäe Palace (Maarjamäe loss), a neo-Gothic residence built for an aide of the Tsar, Count Anatoli Orlov-Davidov, in 1873, was long considered a beauty spot on account of its position overlooking Tallinn Bay.

Today the palace houses the Estonian History Museum (Eesti ajaloomuuseum)’s exhibition My Free Country, which covers the nation’s past from the late nineteenth century onwards. The display is hugely engrossing and heavily visual – from grainy photographs of the Estonian volunteers who battled Bolsheviks, White Russians and Germans in the aftermath of World War I, to pictures of the “Forest Brothers”, Estonian partisans who fought Soviet occupation into the 1950s. One display reveals the kind of underwear worn by Estonians during the Soviet era – the sexiest garments, explains the accompanying caption, were reserved for export, leaving local shops full of frumpy gear.