Linnahall: Estonia's favourite derelict building

I’d arrived in Tallinn by ferry on the M/S Finlandia from Helsinki the evening prior. Coming in by boat offered an interesting perspective, trying to get a glimpse of the skyline through the portholes of the bulkhead of the ferry. I stepped off and out into the second new country I was about to visit on my holiday. I couldn’t see much though, the city was blanketed in darkness. The Estonian nights in January are suffocatingly dark, it feels like it is raining down on you, the streetlights acting like an umbrella keeping you dry.

I woke up the next morning, and I finally got a chance to look around Tallinn in the light of day. Very quickly I noticed there was a distinct idea of architectural layering. I was staying relatively close to the Joint Ministry building of the Estonian Government, just south of the old town. The area was largely made up of a mismatched cocktail of low rise concrete residential projects. But a 10-minute walk up the road was the UNESCO World Heritage listed old town, built largely during the Hanseatic and Livonian times of Tallinn’s history. It's a beautiful “Chocolate box-esque” maze of orange roofed and yellow walled buildings. Interspersed by structures like the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral, and what is left of the old city wall. The quaint cobbled streets of the old town are then abruptly cut off, by the largely contemporary seafront. I’d been told by a local tour guide that in the Soviet era the seafront was a maze of factories, closed off to the public to stop any Soviet Citizens from fleeing the USSR over the Baltic to Finland or Sweden. The entire area has been since heavily redeveloped, although some legacy of this remains. For example, the Estonian Architecture Museum is located in an old salt storage building in the area, and Andrei Tarkovsky filmed parts of his iconic 1979 Sci-Fi film “Stalker”, with the industrial district serving as the location in for the entrance to “the Zone”.

One place stands out the most though from this largely contemporary sea front. An eroding, derelict, graffiti ridden block of concrete. The Tallinn Linnahall.

I’d been fascinated by the Linnahall since I first heard of it. Randomly coming across the building during a TikTok doomscrolling session a couple of years ago. I’ve been fascinated by the idea of dereliction and abandonment on this scale for a while now. I went out of my way trying to find examples of this kind of forgotten architecture while in Berlin in 2022, being fascinated by Tempelhof Airport, the Haus der Statistik, and the former Bärenquell Brauerei. And the Linnahall was no different. Built as a music venue built as part of the larger scale development for the 1980 Moscow Olympics Sailing event which was held on the Baltic. The Linnahall was designed by Raine Karp, and Riina Altmäe and it held a range of events like concerts up until its closure in 2010. It remains standing in 2025 (obviously, otherwise I wouldn’t be writing), and it has very clearly seen better days. What used to stand upon the shores of the Baltic as a site of performance now finds itself in a state of disrepair: moss growing on every surface, weeds between the paving slaps, broken glass, firework casings, graffiti, cracked floor tiles, lethally worn down stairs, broken wire fences to stop people from wandering where there not meant to. On paper it sounds like a cesspit, in reality it’s quite the opposite.

It’s clear that despite the dereliction it’s still a feature of Tallinn’s seafront. One of the city’s tram line runs under the main promenade of the building, a jogger’s route took him up the stairs to the top of the building where he sat down on the massive concrete ‘railings’ for a rest, numerous tourist were exploring the building to take photos of this brutalist monolith (myself included), even the Estonian Army were there (I would’ve asked what they were doing - however my Estonian was pretty non-existent anyway, let alone when faced with several soldiers armed with assault rifles). And it is even seen in a positive light by some of the locals. The Estonian Architecture museum has previously had an exhibition on the Linnahall, with the Lady who worked on the reception there waxing lyrical about the building’s design having just given me a poster for a previous exhibition called “Linnahall forever”(Estonian Museum of Architecture, n.d.). She then told me that they have another exhibition about the Linnahall arriving later in the year.

The more I look back at it, the more I wonder: Why is such a popular building left in such disrepair? Architecturally I can understand why the Linnahall is popular, as a style brutalism has its fans. Brady Corbet for example, the Director, producer, and co-writer of the 2024 Oscar Nominated “the Brutalist” (he also coincidentally played Alan Tracy in one of my favourite childhood films, 2004’s very poorly received “Thunderbirds”). Corbet said that Brutalism was “the correct visual allegory for exploring post-war trauma”(Kouguell, 2025). Mona Fastvold, the other co-writer, used brutalism as the centre point of the film because “Obviously brutalism is also incredibly cinematic. The idea that you are constantly working with light, using minimalism and maximalism in a way, to sort of guide your eye to something quite specific.”(Kouguell, 2025) I myself met a lot of brutalism fans, after all I studied Architecture at University in the 2020s. I have an element of appreciation for it as well; the imposing masses, and harshness of the design makes me feel a bit like I’m walking through a bleak dystopian future, like I’m doing something subversive by interacting with this space. However, I’m not enamoured by it unlike others. Maybe because I don’t live off Pret Coffee and weed, but more likely because I can’t think of much worse things than constantly living in a world where all of the buildings look like the budget ran out for cladding. It should also be said that it does have its critics. American Broadcaster NPR Interviewed people in Washington DC about the FBI Headquarters, member of the public Darren Williams saying “It kinda looks like a prison with windows. Just a concrete slab stuck in the middle of a city.”(Kline, 2024)  

But the question I found myself asking while walking around Tallinn after visiting the Linnahall was: Why is the Linnahall in the state it’s in?

Before going further, it should be said that in February 2025 there has recently been a proposal for drawing up a new development plan for regenerating the Linnahall and the surrounding area. Viljar Jaamu, and Madle Lippus, Tallinn’s deputy Mayors for city property, and urban development respectively. The plan currently comprises of reinventing the Linnahall as “ a significant cultural landmark for Tallinn and Estonia, potentially housing a concert hall, opera house, museum, or library, making it a central symbol of the Old Harbor area.”(Pärli, 2025) And in March Tallinn city Architect, Andro Mänd, in an interview with Mari Peegel of ERR news said that “the area surrounding Linnahall are in need of new multifunctional urban environments”(Peegel, 2025). Mänd goes onto say that the Linnahall needs to be “become a multifunctional center — because a standalone conference venue wouldn't be financially sustainable”(Peegel, 2025) as there have been proposals for the Linnahall to become a conference centre as Tallinn has no suitable spaces since the closure of an exhibition hall in the outer suburb of Pirita(Peegel, 2025).

Once I arrived in Tallinn it didn’t take long to get a feel for their opinions on Estonia’s foreign policy. Many flagpoles fly the Ukrainian flag alongside the flags of Estonia and Tallinn. One of Tallinn’s tallest buildings, the Skyon building, is lit up in the blue and yellow of the Ukrainian flag. The Tallinn city museum talks very openly about how what is now Estonia requested to become part of the Swedish empire to avoid control by the Russian empire. Vabamu is a museum which tells the stories of the forcible relocation of Estonians by the USSR, and the USSR’s subsequent state enforced repression. 10,000 Estonians were relocated during the June deportations of June 1941 during the first Soviet occupation, with a further 22,500 in March 1949 (Černoušek, 2020). These stories are echoed further by the monolithic Memorial to the Victims of Communism in the outskirts of the city.

It’s pretty clear that Estonia has a difficult relationship with Russia. So that is why I asked “Why?”, so many memorials from that time have been removed, or have been left to rot with very little care or attention give. Incidentally adjacent to the Memorial to the Victims of Communism stands the Maarjamäe Memorial, a now decaying World War Two Soviet Memorial. Then next to that is the Maarjamäe Castle where there is a permanent outdoor exhibition where several Soviet era statues have been preserved and contextualised with the stories of the statues. I can say with a reasonable amount of confidence that places in the Maarjamäe area are lieux de mémoire (memory space). It is clear that an image/aura has been “created by a play of memory and history”(Nora, 1989), and that there is a “will to remember”(Nora, 1989), something that is key to a space becoming a lieu de mémoire. The original Maarjamäe Memorial was built “in dedication of those who had fallen defending the Soviet Union”(Visit Estonia, n.d). The Memorial to the Victims of Communism is for … well.. I’ll leave that one for you to work out. And the Memorial Graveyard tells the often ironic stories of those who have been sculpted. Several statues there were of “Heroes of the Soviet Union”, who in reality abhorred the USSR, and often ended up meeting their fate in an unfortunate industrial accident … as they were sat at home eating dinner. There were also statues of more notable Soviet figures like Stalin and Lenin, whose statues came from across Estonia.

However, let’s get back to the main “lieu” at hand.

In a 2006 issue of Architectural Design Andres Kurg claims that the Linnahall “On a symbolic level, there was strong pressure to erase from the city any physical representations of the Soviet era, ranging from removing monuments and rebuilding houses, to simply recladding old structures with new facade systems”(Kurg, 2006). This has clearly happened with the aforementioned Maarjamäe memorial, as well as how many of the Soviet statues ended up in the statue graveyard. But how has this effected the Linnahall? In 2004 the municipal government was in the process of trying to sell the Linnahall to help balance their books, however the potential buyer wanted the site not the building(Kurg, 2006). One thing stood in the way: in 1992 the Linnahall was designated as an architectural monument (Kurg, 2006). The developer then engaged in a campaign as a result to try and deem the Linnahall as a “that sooner or later the building would disappear anyway, that it did not fit with contemporary requirements, was a site primarily for the Communist Party elite, and even that concerts on this scale would at some point cease to exist”(Kurg, 2006). Even investment experts said that renovating the Linnahall would need “major rebuilding” to be able to accommodate contemporary events (Kurg, 2006). But one thing stood in the way: The people of Tallinn. They saw the Linnahall and they were remembered the concerts that happened there, and they appreciated the brutalist design was rare compared to the more recently built metal and glass high rises (Kurg, 2006).

In Francisco Martínez’s analysis of the Linnahall’s position of the wider Soviet inheritance in Estonia. He said that the Linnahall “might have failed to promote socialism as a political view and as a way of envisioning the future, yet its impact in Tallinn’s urbanity has been wider than its functioning life, probably because of its openness to critical and imaginative reinscription”(Martínez, 2018). I agree, seeing as how some Tallinn residents were able to associate the Linnahall with memories of concerts, rather than Soviet oppression. Martinez goes onto say the Linnahall served “as a catalyst for the redefinition and transformation of urban space in the Estonian capital, turning traditional port areas into a site valued for its scenic waterfronts”(Martínez, 2018). Again, I agree, later in the day after looking around the Linnahall I took the bus along the waterfront one day where most of the buildings today are a plethora of medium rise residential buildings, and cultural outlets. Martinez frames how the image of the Linnahall has changed as maturing. He says “The situation of abandonment adds a new layer of meaning to Linnahall, a new availability repeatedly taken by younger generations”(Martínez, 2018). I myself took this opportunity, as I explored the Linnahall on the overcast Thursday in January I was not alone, many other people of a similar age to myself were out and about finding our own stories, our own interpretations of this . He references philosopher Mikhail Yampolsky who said “As a spatial structure, Linnahall fulfils the same functions as a monument: paralysing the flow of time, creating the experience of temporal metamorphosis”(Martínez, 2018; Yampolsky, 1995).

I think that amongst the other Soviet landmarks of the city, the Linnahall is clearly very different to many others which are still standing today. The Linnahall has become a lieu de mémoire which in the eyes of the people of Tallinn represents the memories people have of concerts, the ice rink, the Olympic sailing. As opposed to the lieu de mémoire  which the property developers tried to portray the Linnahall as: a symbol of Soviet repression and elitism, much like the old statues and many more examples of the Soviet inheritance. What was planned as a focal point of the USSR’s grand Olympic sailing regatta is now a symbol of something completely different.

When I went to the Linnahall my first hypothesis was that it exists in this state of decay to try and dispel any latent Soviet pride left in Estonia. Leaving such a symbol in the state it is to demean the system which had demeaned them for nearly half a century. The Linnahall was just waiting to be disposed of, to live on in the memory of anecdotes of those who visited there, and grungy photographs of what once was. Only for a new building to rise, undoubtedly compared in some way to a phoenix, but in reality the building only becomes yet another ubiquitous metal and glass box. And it turns out, that was what almost happened with what Kurg told us about the council and property developers.

I’ve always felt that architecture isn’t necessarily about designing buildings, it’s about engineering spaces and interactions. I’m not sure if Raine Karp or Riina Altmäe had originally planned on the Linnahall becoming the building it is today, but I think that their brutalist pyramid on the Baltic has done a lot more than what was originally asked of. Kurg told us of how the building was so unique and admired by the public it gained architectural monument status, as the Linnahall was a concrete diamond in the concrete and steel rough. Martínez told us stories of how people hold fond memories of drinking Coke mixed with cheap wine(Martínez, 2018) as they interacted with the building which linked Tallinn with the Baltic, something which was rare during the period of the USSR.

In an era of Soviet erasure in Estonia the Linnahall still remains. Because the Linnahall isn’t a Soviet monument anymore, it’s an Estonian monument. It links the people to the sea which they were forbidden from seeing. It serves as a place where people can reminisce on memories of concerts, and sunsets. Despite the forces which existentially threatened the Linnahall be it physical forces like decay, political forces like the Soviet inheritance, and architectural forces like the redevelopment it still remains as a place for the people to come and interact and experience a landmark that is unlike many others. The Linnahall still stands with a sense of battered pride because the Linnahall is Estonia’s favourite derelict building.

Černoušek, Š., 2020. Soviet repression and deportations in the Baltic states [WWW Document]. Gulag Online. URL https://gulag.online/articles/soviet-repression-and-deportations-in-the-baltic-states?locale=en (accessed 4.3.25).

Estonian Museum of Architecture, n.d. Linnahall Forever [WWW Document]. Estonian Museum of Architecture. URL https://www.arhitektuurimuuseum.ee/eng/exhibition/linnahall-forever/ (accessed 4.4.25).

Kline, K., 2024. Why brutalist buildings should stay, even if people think they’re ugly [WWW Document]. npr. URL https://www.npr.org/2024/08/12/g-s1-6417/brutalism-architecture-carbon-emissions

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Kurg, A., 2006. Estonia: the remarkable afterlife of the Linnahall concert hall. Architectural Design 76 Special Issue: The New Europe, 46–53. https://doi.org/10.1002/ad.265

Martínez, F., 2018. Remains of the Soviet Past in Estonia: An Anthropology of Forgetting, Repair and Urban Traces, Fringe. UCL Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv3hh4dr

Nora, P., 1989. Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire. Representations No. 26, 7–24. https://doi.org/10.2307/2928520

Pärli, M., 2025. Tallinn to initiate new development plan for Linnahall [WWW Document]. ERR News. URL https://news.err.ee/1609600988/tallinn-to-initiate-new-development-plan-for-linnahall#:~:text=Tallinn%20has%20proposed%20initiating%20a,rink%20into%20a%20conference%20center.

Peegel, M., 2025. Tallinn city architect: There is light at the end of the tunnel for Linnahall [WWW Document]. ERR News. URL https://news.err.ee/1609648634/tallinn-city-architect-there-is-light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel-for-linnahall#header

Visit Estonia, n.d. Maarjamäe Memorial [WWW Document]. Visit Estonia. URL https://visitestonia.com/en/maarjamae-memorial (accessed 4.4.25).

Yampolsky, M., 1995. In the Shadow of Monuments: Notes on Iconoclasm and Time, in: Soviet Hieroglyphics: Visual Culture in Late Twentieth-Century Russia, Edited by Nancy Condee. Indiana University Press, Bloomington, pp. 93–113.