A walk along the Beta-promenade of Tallinn

On a recent sunny weekend, looking out the window with @raili, we decided that staying indoors was a crime. As we hadn't made any plans to drive out of the city, we decided to wing it and to go for a walk along the Beta-promenade of Tallinn, past the old Patarei prison and towards the seaplane harbour.

First things first - what is the Beta-promendae?

Well, in 2016, the Maritime Culture Year in Estonia, some orgnizations created this simple promenade along the coast of Tallinn, by opening gates, removing fences and fortifying the shore, according to kultuur.info.

It's a decent walk, and being near the sea on a beautiful day is exactly what the soul needs.

So our trip starts at Linnahall, the giant remnant of Soviet Era.

The weather is beautiful. In the background, top left, the Patarei Prison can be seen.

Patarei Prison was built in 1840 as some sort of fort/barracks, but later, in the 1920es, turned into a prison, shutting down it's operations only as late as early 2000s. It operated as a museum until 2017, halting all operations and is now loking for a buyer to maintain this historical building.

As we climb down the countless steps of Linnahall, we come across this awesome graffiti on the walls. Perhaps it can not even be called graffiti, rather a spectacular wall art? The city has decided to clean the walls of Linnahall, to wash these beautiful pieces of art off and expose the ugly brick walls again, unfortunately.

As we approach Patarei from the promenade, it sits quietly and cheerfully under the shade of trees.

Looking at it from the outside on a sunny day, it has a hard time describing or conveying the horrors, that took place here once.

If one would dig deeper into the stories found on the web, he would find sad, cruel stories, filled with hate, despair and anger.

Behind these windows, overcrowded cells were located. At one time, according to some sources, Patarei housed 10 times the allowed amount of prisoners. You can imagine the conditions in the prison - people sleeping and sitting like fish in a barrel.

Making our way forward to the other side, the picture is much more cheerful. The rays of sun cover this side of the building and it's easy to forget the history of this place.

If you look closely, you notice that someone has created a shape of heart of the barbed wire of the fence, bordering between Patarei and the sea.

We reach the old seaplane harbour that is now repurposed as an interactive museum.

We stumble across this collection of old cannons, lifted from the bottom of the sea. I wonder if there is any bang left in them?

The ship in the background is Suur Tõll (The Great Tõll), a Soviet era icebreaker ship, running on steam, now repurposed for display and as a museum exposition.

Various other smaller ships and boats can be seen sitting at and on the docks.

Often at times of various cultural events, people are allowed on these ships, to look around. Some even offer cruises for small fees.

This small train creeped up on us when we we driving to Linnahall earlier. I remember almost jumping out of the car when this badboy pulled in behind me:

We take a final look at Patarei from this side and circle back to the car.

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_{Title image from pixabay}

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