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PA¤rnu
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Main town of the southwestern coast, down towards the border with Latvia,
PA?RNU
's sights are mostly clustered in the
Old Town
, on and around RA?A?tli and Kuninga. The town's bus station is on Pikk at the northeastern edge of the Old Town (information & ticket office is round the corner at Ringi 3), and the
train station
is about 5km east of the centre at Riia mnt. 116.
RA?A?tli, lined with two-storey wooden houses, is the Old Town's main thoroughfare, cutting east-west through the centre. Near the junction with Aia is the PA¤rnu Museum (Linnamuuseum), RA?A?tli 53 (Tues-Fri 11am-6pm, Sat 11am-5pm; 30EEK), devoted to local history, and housing some of Estonia's oldest archeological finds - dating back to 8000 BC - and examples of local traditional costume. The oldest building in town is the Red Tower (Punane Torn), a fifteenth-century remnant of the medieval city walls on Hommiku, running north from RA?A?tli a few blocks west of the museum. Despite its name the tower is actually white - only the roof and window frames are red - and it now houses an antique shop. PA?havaimu , a few blocks to the west, has a pair of respectable-looking seventeenth-century houses near the junction with MalmAļ, one in lemon yellow, the other in washed-out green with a large gabled vestibule. Moving west from PA?havaimu along Uus leads to the Catherine Church (Jekateriina kirik), a green-domed and multi-spired Orthodox church from 1760 named after the Russian empress Catherine the Great. The interior is abundantly furnished with icons but is open for services only.
From the Catherine Church, Vee runs down to
Kuninga
, the Old Town's other major street. At the western end of Kuninga is the seventeenth-century
Tallinn Gate
(Tallinna vA¤rav), a rather elegant relic of the Swedish occupation, set into the remains of the city ramparts and now home to a bar. To see the gate at its best head into the park on its outer side from where, with its massive gable and decorative pillars, it looks more like a Baroque chapel. Heading east along Kuninga leads to the Lutheran
Elizabeth Church
(Elisabethi kirik; Mon-Fri 10am-2pm) dating from 1747, with a maroon and ochre Baroque exterior and plain, wood-panelled interior. From here, Nikolai leads south to Esplanaadi, where the
PA¤rnu New Art Museum
(PA¤rnu Uue Kunsti Muuseum; daily 9am-9pm; 20EEK) occupies the former communist party headquarters at no. 10. Taken over by local artists in the post-independence years (when it was briefly renamed the Charlie Chaplin House), it's now a cultural centre with a collection of twentieth-century Estonian paintings, and contemporary works donated by international artists, including Yoko Ono. South of here Nikolai joins Supeluse, which runs down to the city's
resort area
, passing beneath the trees of the Rannapark, a shady park separating the town from the beach. At the southern end of Supeluse are the grand, colonnaded Neoclassical
PA¤rnu Mud-Baths
(PA¤rnu Mudaravila), built in 1926, and painted in the familiar ochre. Nearby is PA¤rnu's sandy, white beach, immensely busy at weekends and on public holidays. To escape the crowds make for the dunes east of the Mud Baths, but if you want to mingle with the masses head in the opposite direction, where you'll find a stretch of open sand backed by kiosks, bars, cafAŠs and ice-cream places. Other useful information
for tourists (each section contains more specific sub-sections): |
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Estonia,
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