Kadriorg Park

Peter the Great laid out Kadriorg Park in 1718 as an imperial pleasure ground around the summer palace, and 300 years later it is still the city's green heart — 70 hectares of formal gardens, wilder woodland, oak avenues, ponds and monuments. Locals walk their dogs here on Sunday mornings, students revise on the benches, families feed the swans, and the whole thing is completely free, open dawn to dusk. The name is simply a translation of Catherinethal, Catherine's valley, for Peter's wife Catherine I, and the Italian architect Nicola Michetti set the whole layout on one long axis running up from the sea. Decide at the gate what kind of day you want: the green is free and endless, while every building standing in it charges its own separate admission. Most visitors do the walk and pick one museum, which is the right call.

The formal core sits behind the palace: box-hedge parterres, the Mirage fountain, and the swan pond with its little gazebo (posted by every wedding photographer in Tallinn). North of that is the Japanese Garden, designed by Masao Sone in 2011 — one of the finest in northern Europe, at its best in cherry-blossom time and autumn maple. The Kumu museum sits in the eastern part, the Presidential Palace (still working, guarded) in the west, and Peter's original modest cottage — Peeter I majamuuseum — near the entrance. Two smaller museums hide in plain sight as well: the Mikkel Museum, in the palace's old kitchen building, showing Johannes Mikkel's donated collection of European and Chinese art, and the Eduard Vilde Museum in the former coachman's house on Roheline aas. Both take under an hour and neither draws a queue.

Enter from the tram terminus and walk clockwise: swan pond, palace, Japanese garden, Kumu, Presidential Palace, out to the sea at Russalka mermaid monument. That is a two-hour loop that shows you everything and drops you on the coastal promenade. Bring a coffee from Neitsitorn cafe. In winter the pond freezes and children skate; in April the tulips outside the palace go off like fireworks. If you have energy left at the Russalka end, keep going north-east and the promenade carries you towards the Song Festival Grounds in another quarter of an hour, which turns a park walk into a proper half-day on foot. Do the loop in that direction rather than the reverse: you finish at the open sea with the wind behind you instead of trudging back uphill through the same avenues.

Walked properly, the park has three separate characters. The Lower Garden directly behind the palace is the disciplined one — clipped parterres, the Mirage fountain, beds replanted twice a year, and gates that are locked in the evening. West of it the swan pond loop takes twenty easy minutes, gazebo photo included. Above the palace the ground rises through the upper garden into genuinely wooded slopes: oak, lime and horse-chestnut avenues on Michetti's original axis, gravel underfoot, benches every fifty metres, almost nobody. The third character is the everyday Kadriorg the guidebooks skip — a big playground on the Weizenbergi side, public tennis courts, the Kadriorg stadium, and joggers on the outer ring. Budget forty minutes for the formal core, thirty for the woods, and accept that you will not walk every path. Nobody does.

Getting here is the easy part. Trams 1 and 3 both terminate at Kadriorg, roughly ten minutes from Viru väljak and running every six to ten minutes through the day; a paper single from the driver is €2 in cash, cheaper if you load a Ühiskaart smartcard bought at an R-Kiosk. Buses along Narva maantee drop you at the Kadriorg and J. Poska stops, one block short of the main gate. Walking from the Viru gate is about 2.5 km, thirty minutes down a busy road, and only worth it if you cut to the sea instead and come in past Russalka. Drivers face paid city-zone parking on Weizenbergi, Koidula and Poska, or Kumu's own underground car park, which is the sane summer choice. From Hilton Tallinn Park or Nordic Hotel Forum it is a 25-minute walk.

The park itself costs nothing and always has. The buildings inside it do not. Kadriorg Palace, home to the Art Museum of Estonia's foreign collection of 16th- to 20th-century Western European and Russian art, runs around €8-10 for adults with student and senior reductions and free entry for small children. Kumu is the expensive one at roughly €12-15 for the full house, permanent collection included, with major temporary shows sometimes ticketed separately. The Mikkel Museum sits a few euros below the palace, and Peter the Great's cottage is the cheapest of all at a handful of euros, open only in the warmer months. Ask at either desk about the combined ticket across the Kadriorg branches — it undercuts paying twice. Realistic budget: €0 for the walk, about €20 for park, one museum and trams.

Timing changes this place more than any ticket decision. Dawn to dusk is literal: in December the light has gone by about half past three and the wooded upper paths are unlit, so the winter visit is a short midday one. The best hour year-round is before ten, when the dog walkers own the avenues and Kumu has not opened; coach groups and school parties arrive with the museums. Museums close Mondays, and Kumu and the palace also shut Tuesdays outside the summer season, so a Monday visit is a park visit only. May is the peak month for tulips and blossom, late September and October for the maples in the Japanese Garden, and midsummer evenings stay light until nearly half past ten. February and March are grim — grey slush, frozen gravel, bare beds.

It suits families better than almost anything else in Tallinn: flat asphalt loops for buggies, swans to feed, a large playground, ice cream in summer and free entry for everyone. Wheelchair users can manage the main axis, the palace forecourt, the pond circuit and Kumu, which has lifts throughout; the Japanese Garden's gravel and steps and the wooded upper slopes are not realistic, and the palace's grand staircase is the barrier there. Teenagers who glaze over at box hedges wake up on Kumu's contemporary floor. On a wet afternoon Kumu alone absorbs three hours. With only an hour before a ferry or train, take the tram out, do swan pond, gazebo and palace facade, and tram back — fifty-five minutes, no museum, no regrets.

Nearby, the Song Festival Grounds are fifteen minutes north-east; the arched stage is free to walk onto and the light tower charges a small fee to climb. Maarjamäe Palace and the Estonian History Museum, with the Soviet monument complex and the Film Museum, are another twenty-five minutes up the coast, and Pirita beach and the convent ruins roughly forty. The wooden-house streets of Poska, Koidula and Vesivärava are ten minutes from the gate, with NOP on Köleri for lunch. Honest caveats: the Japanese Garden is small — fifteen to twenty minutes, and it is not Kyoto; the palace interiors are an art gallery, not furnished imperial rooms, so anyone expecting Peterhof leaves flat; the Presidential Palace can only be photographed through its fence; and there is no real café inside the park itself.

Hours & entry

Free entry always

Daily dawn-dusk

What to see

• Swan pond and gazebo — Directly behind Kadriorg Palace, west side
• Japanese Garden — Northern section, 5 min walk from the palace
• Russalka mermaid monument on the coast — Northeast park exit, on the sea promenade

Tips from the ground

• Cherry blossom in the Japanese Garden peaks around 5-15 May.
• Sunday morning is dog-walk time — the atmosphere at its best.
• Combine with Kadriorg Palace and Kumu for a full culture-and-green day.