Tallinn, EE

The Old Town's most beloved sit-down restaurant, doing hearty modern takes on Estonian home cooking in a warren of rooms behind the Wishing Well lane. The elk roast and the warm chocolate cake have near-cult status, and the house pumpkin bread with seasoned butter lands before you order. It books out nightly, so this is one to plan around.

A Nordic kitchen named for the dark rye bread it bakes in house, set in a walled garden against the Old Town ramparts. The cooking is clean and seasonal, built on Estonian farm produce and herbs from the garden you are sitting in. The courtyard tables in summer are among the nicest in the city.

The restaurant that opened the Telliskivi creative quarter and still the one everyone in the city has eaten at, in a raw former factory hall with industrial bones. The menu is broad, generous and inexpensive, sliding from all-day brunch plates to comfort dinners. It is the easy, reliable anchor of a day spent in the creative city.

A pan-Asian kitchen in Telliskivi whose name means 'flying saucer,' turning out punchy Thai and Vietnamese plates meant to be shared. It is the spot locals reach for when they want bright, spicy food rather than another plate of pork and potatoes. Loud, colourful and good with a group.

The taproom of Estonia's leading craft brewery, in the converted Noblessner shipyard, pairing the country's best beer list with Texas-style smoked barbecue. Brisket and ribs come off a real smoker, and the rotating taps run deep into stouts and sours. It is a long, easy afternoon by the water in the old industrial harbour.

A sweet neighbourhood cafe in one of Kalamaja's traditional yellow wooden houses, known for crepes both sweet and savoury and a slow, bohemian pace. It is where the district's residents linger over coffee and the weekend papers. Small, warm and entirely unhurried.

A fine-dining room on the Pirita shore with a glassed-in view back across the bay to the Old Town skyline, doing precise, modern tasting menus built around Baltic seafood. It is the city's special-occasion seat, a notch above anything in the centre on both cooking and setting. Worth the short trip out for a long, slow dinner.

A wine-bar restaurant in the glassy Rotermann quarter, pairing a long natural-leaning wine list with small Mediterranean-leaning plates. It draws a design-conscious local crowd in the regenerated warehouse district between the Old Town and the sea. Good for grazing and a couple of unusual glasses rather than a heavy sit-down.

The Old Town's pioneering all-vegan kitchen, sending out a genuinely refined plant menu rather than the usual fallback salads, in a snug cellar-and-courtyard space. It has quietly become a destination even for committed meat-eaters because the cooking is properly composed. A rare thing in a city built on pork and rye.

The oldest cafe in Tallinn, trading since the 1860s under original carved-wood interiors, famous for marzipan shaped and painted by hand in the workshop next door. It is part cafe, part living museum, and the cakes are exactly as old-fashioned as the room. Come for coffee and a slice rather than a meal.

A relaxed waterfront bistro in the Noblessner harbour with an open kitchen and a menu that leans on the day's catch and a strong raw bar. It is the easy, slightly less formal counterpoint to the fine-dining rooms nearby, with a terrace right on the marina. Good for a long lunch by the water.

The wooded former palace park east of the centre, laced with shaded gravel paths, an ornamental pond and formal gardens. It is the city's favourite easy walk, flat and pram-friendly, threading past museums and the swan pond. A loop here is the gentlest way to spend a morning outdoors in town.

The long sandy beach and pine-backed promenade on the bay north-east of the city, with a flat seafront path that runs for kilometres past the marina and convent ruins. It is where Tallinners come to walk, run and swim in summer, with the Old Town skyline across the water. Easy, scenic and largely level.

A pine-shaded urban beach park on the western shore in Pelguranna, quieter and more local than Pirita, with a flat coastal path through the trees. It is the neighbourhood's green lung, popular for an evening stroll and a swim without leaving the city. A relaxed, short waterfront walk.

A small forested island in Tallinn Bay reached by a short summer ferry, ringed by a marked nature trail through pine woods, old coastal-defence ruins and quiet shingle beaches. It feels remote despite being a half hour from the city, and a full loop of the island is an easy day's walk. The closest thing to wilderness on Tallinn's doorstep.

A lakeside nature trail looping the wooded shore of Lake Harku on the city's south-western edge, with boardwalk sections through reed beds and quiet forest. It is a suburban green escape that locals use for runs and dog walks, away from the tourist map entirely. Flat, easy and genuinely local.

The flagship of the Estonian national art collection, a striking copper-and-glass building cut into the Kadriorg hillside, holding two centuries of Estonian art including the strange, strong work made under Soviet occupation. It is the best single museum in the Baltics and an easy half day. Architecture and collection are equally the point.

A maritime museum set in a vast 1910s seaplane hangar on the Kalamaja waterfront, with a real submarine you can climb inside and aircraft hung from the concrete domes overhead. It is hands-on and genuinely impressive in scale, the rare museum that works equally for kids and adults. Plan a couple of hours.

A former railway-factory complex turned creative city, now hundreds of studios, galleries, shops, street-art walls and a constant churn of markets and events. It is the centre of gravity for young Tallinn and the antidote to the medieval centre. Come to browse, eat and catch whatever is on rather than to see one fixed thing.

The country's grand opera and ballet house in a 1913 art-nouveau building on the edge of the Old Town, home to the national companies. Tickets cost a fraction of what the equivalent would in western Europe, which makes a dressed-up night out genuinely accessible. A proper evening rather than a daytime stop.

The vast open-air song festival grounds on the Pirita road, with a soaring shell-shaped stage that holds tens of thousands of singers at the national song festival. It is the emotional heart of Estonian identity, the place where the Singing Revolution gathered crowds that helped end Soviet rule. Climb the arch for a view and feel the scale even when empty.

The Contemporary Art Museum of Estonia, a scrappy independent gallery in a former industrial building near Telliskivi, showing experimental and often provocative work the bigger institutions skip. It is small, free-spirited and changes constantly, the place to take the temperature of the local scene. Quick to see and worth folding into a Kalamaja wander.

The 1980 television tower on the Pirita edge of the city, with a glass-floored observation deck more than 170 metres up and a revolving cafe. Built for the Moscow Olympics sailing regatta, it gives the widest view there is over the city, forest and sea. A clear-day trip for the panorama and the vertiginous glass floor.

The medieval market square at the heart of the Old Town, anchored by the only surviving Gothic town hall in northern Europe. It has been the city's living room for seven centuries, ringed by merchants' houses and a working apothecary that has traded on the same corner since the early 1400s. Go for the scale of the square, then duck into the lanes off it.

A soaring Gothic church in the lower Old Town whose spire was, by legend, once the tallest building in the world. The draw is the narrow stone staircase up the tower, which spits you out on an exposed walkway with the best unbroken view over the medieval roofs to the harbour. The climb is tight and not for the claustrophobic.

The classic Toompea hill lookout where the whole lower town unfurls below in a sweep of red roofs, green spires and the sea beyond. It is the postcard view of Tallinn and free to reach on foot through the upper town's quiet lanes. Best in the soft light of early evening.

A pink Baroque palace that Peter the Great built for his wife Catherine, set in formal gardens a tram ride east of the centre. Inside is the foreign-art wing of the national collection, but the grounds, swan pond and flower beds are the real reason to come and are free to wander. Pair it with the surrounding park for a half day away from the cobbles.

A quiet contemporary Japanese garden tucked into the wooded edge of Kadriorg park, designed by a Japanese landscape architect with raked gravel, a stream and carefully placed stone. It is the calmest corner of the whole park and most visitors never find it. Good for a slow loop on the way to or from the palace.

The roofless shell of a 15th-century convent church standing on the Pirita coast, its tall west gable still intact and open to the sky. Swedish troops gutted it during the Livonian War and it has stood as a romantic ruin ever since. It pairs naturally with Pirita beach and the marina next door.

The onion-domed Russian Orthodox cathedral crowning Toompea hill, built at the end of the 19th century in deliberate contrast to the Lutheran town around it. The dim, candle-lit, icon-heavy interior is a complete shift in mood from the Gothic churches below. It faces the Estonian parliament across the square, a pointed bit of history in stone.