Things to do
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AHHAA Science Centre
Hands-on physics fills a circular building by the river: a bicycle ridden along a cable above the atrium, a planetarium, and workshop demonstrations of liquid nitrogen and high voltage. It is aimed at children and holds adults through a wet afternoon. Weekends and school holidays are busy, and the planetarium is ticketed separately.
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Estonian National Museum
Built along the runway of a Soviet airbase outside the centre, the glass hall rises off the tarmac at one end and settles into the ground at the other. Inside, an ethnographic collection traces Estonian rural life alongside a Finno-Ugric gallery covering related cultures across Russia. Bus links from town are infrequent, so allow time for the return.
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Tartu Town Hall Square
A sloping cobbled rectangle runs from the pink town hall down to the river, with the leaning Barclay house on one side and a fountain of kissing students at the top that serves as the city's meeting point. Cafe terraces fill it from May. Markets and concerts take over in summer, and traffic is kept out.
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Toome Hill
Parkland above the old town covers the former cathedral precinct, crossed by the Angel's Bridge and the Devil's Bridge and planted with limes over old burial ground. Student superstition attaches to the bridges, which are crossed in silence before examinations. Twenty minutes gets from end to end, and the paths link the museum quarter to the centre.
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University of Tartu Museum
Occupying the ruined Gothic cathedral on Toome Hill, the collection sets the university's history in the rebuilt choir: instruments, student society regalia and a restored lecture room. The two surviving brick towers can be climbed for a view over the rooftops. Winter hours are short, and the stairs are steep and unheated.