Linnahall
Whenever you see a dreary mass of concrete in Estonia, there is good reason to believe it is of Soviet origin, and indeed, this is the former Vladimir Lenin Palace of Culture and Sports, a link to Tallinn's nearly forgotten role as an Olympic city. When Moscow hosted the heavily boycotted Summer Games in 1980, it stamped this Brutalist footprint on Tallinn, along with a number of other entertainment venues, to complement the site of the Games' sailing competitions, held on a triangular course in the Baltic Sea.
It was portrayed as the Kyiv opera house in the tense opening scenes of Christopher Nolan's "Tenet" (2019), for a while one of the only new movies you could see at the beginning of the pandemic ― remember? This guy's drone caught some of the filming.
These Olympics structures tend to wither over time, and this one is no different. It is now carpeted by broken glass and is a canvas for the city's graffiti artists, having fallen into disuse more than a decade ago after terms as a skating rink and concert hall.
For reasons that escape me, it is now called Linnahall (City Hall), and the female voice that calls out the tram stops pronounces it LEEN-uh-high. Anyway, add it to Tallinn's extensive Hall of Abandoned Structures.
From the top you can get some good views of the city and its docks, where on Thursday 200 Ukrainian refugees came aboard the Isabelle, owned by the shipping company Tallink. This cruise ship will be their temporary home while housing and employment opportunities are sorted out.
