Seaplane Harbour (Lennusadam)

Maritime museum in a spectacular WWI-era concrete seaplane hangar on the coast

The Seaplane Harbour is one of the finest museum experiences in the Baltic states. The building alone is worth the visit: three massive reinforced concrete domes from 1916 that required nothing but their own geometry — no internal columns or supports — to stay standing. Today they shelter the Estonian Maritime Museum's collection, which includes historic ships, a 1930s submarine (the Lembit, one of the oldest preserved in the world), seaplanes, and an excellent exhibition on Estonian maritime history.

The museum is on the Kalamaja shore, about 2 kilometres from the Old Town. Kids and adults both respond well to the scale of it — you can walk through the Lembit submarine and stand under the enormous dome beside a restored seaplane. One of the best museums in Tallinn, full stop.

things to do museum sight
A story
The three concrete domes of the Lennusadam hangar were built in 1916–17 by the Imperial Russian Navy using a new construction method — thin-shell reinforced concrete — that had never been attempted on this scale. The engineers were German, the workers Estonian and Finnish. When it opened, the hangar was one of the largest reinforced concrete structures in the world. The Bolshevik Revolution interrupted the project and the Russian navy never actually used it.

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